A legend within the multi-level advertising world, Jessie “Boss Lee” Ward, vp of Pruvit, a ketone complement multi-level advertising firm (MLM), has died after a short battle with colon most cancers.
Ward, who claimed to have recruited greater than 12,000 sellers who labored underneath her, was additionally well-known within the direct promoting trade for her enterprise teaching programs, the place for a tiered month-to-month price she provided to show individuals to extend their incomes and turn into coaches themselves.
On the planet of anti-MLM activists, nonetheless, Ward was a deeply controversial determine.
In March, Ward shared along with her a whole bunch of 1000’s of followers that she had been identified with stage 4 colon most cancers after routine blood work.
Ward’s oncologist suggested her that aggressive chemotherapy might prolong her life by two and a half years; in any other case, she can be “lifeless by Christmas,” Ward stated in a podcast look in July.
“My surgeon and the oncologist are a hundred percent pimps. Not of ladies, of chemo. They love that hoe,” Ward stated in an Instagram video, suggesting her medical doctors simply wished commissions. “I’ve by no means in my life seen such a powerful and compelling gross sales pitch. They actually ought to go into gross sales.”
As an alternative, she selected a unique route.
“I’m very anti all of that,” Ward stated in one other TikTok she constituted of her hospital mattress following surgical procedure to take away a part of her gut. “I didn’t even give my canine chemo when she had most cancers. I took a holistic route.”
She then detailed the routine she can be following: classes in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, “magnetic” remedies, “ozone” remedies, and “red-light remedy.”
Activists and bloggers within the anti-MLM world instantly took discover.
In April, Rebecca Watson, a blogger and founding father of the Skepchick Community, made a video entitled “This MLM Influencer Could Get Somebody Killed.”
“She genuinely appears to consider that chemotherapy doesn’t work and that her unproven different therapies will work and that she is going to beat this. She is stating this all to her big viewers of devoted followers. So not solely is that this probably going to kill her, however there’s a great probability it’s going to kill another person too,” Watson stated within the video. “Somebody goes to get a most cancers analysis and they’re going to see these movies and say, ‘Oh, wow, she appears to be like so wholesome and completely happy. She’s beating most cancers. I’m going to do this too.’”
One other anti-MLM YouTuber, Savannah Marie, stated in a video posted in July about Ward’s social media posts.
“She has an enormous viewers,” Marie stated. “If she was anyone else who didn’t have the platform that she has, I’d be like, no matter, if you wish to determine to not do chemo and do espresso enemas as an alternative then, high-quality, that’s on you. However the truth that she’s broadcasting all of this wild stuff that she’s doing is so harmful.”
It was not the primary time Ward had been the middle of a scandal. In Jan. 2023, a bunch of her followers paid to attend a “retreat” with the enterprise coach in Cartagena, Colombia. Ward later admitted that she tricked the attendees into happening a 15-mile hike in excessive warmth, taking a ship trip in the course of the night time, leaping into the ocean, and sleeping moist on a seaside.
“I opted for a mastermind crash course of breaking down each single considered one of these individuals by way of seeing them the place they’re to assist carry them to the place I see them sooner or later,” Ward wrote in an Instagram submit in regards to the debacle.
Following her most cancers analysis, Ward stated she would carry her followers alongside by way of her most cancers journey, however pushed again on the thought she was giving anybody recommendation.
“I’m not telling anybody what to do. Do what you’re feeling like is best for you,” Ward advised her mentor, motivational speaker and podcaster Ed Mylett, in July.
She described present process a collection of unscientific different remedies for most cancers, together with ingesting eight to 12 juices a day (“I’m simply overdosing my physique in diet”), spending time daily in a hyperbaric chamber, utilizing a “biocharger” machine, and taking excessive doses of vitamin C thrice every week.
In her last TikTok video posted on September 5, Ward stated she was persevering with to heal “holistically,” however had been posting much less to social media as a result of she was “in ache.” She stated she had acquired excellent news from a latest pet scan, exhibiting enhancements in her situation.
“All of that is working. All this holistic stuff is working,” she stated within the video.
Then, on Sept. 15, a Fb account for Ward posted asking followers to hitch an internet prayer session for her restoration. “She is combating more durable than ever and we want your assist,” it learn.
Two days later, the account confirmed Ward had died.
“Jessie Lee’s love was a robust drive that touched every of you deeply. She instilled unwavering perception, simple religion, and a powerful need so that you can rework your goals into actuality in each coronary heart she reached,” a submit on the Fb web page learn. “The legacy of Jessie Lee lives on without end by way of all of us guided by the invaluable classes she taught us.”