A legend within the multi-level advertising and marketing world, Jessie “Boss Lee” Ward, vice chairman of Pruvit, a ketone complement multi-level advertising and marketing 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 beneath her, was additionally well-known within the direct promoting trade for her enterprise teaching programs, the place for a tiered month-to-month payment she supplied to show folks to extend their incomes and turn into coaches themselves.
On this planet of anti-MLM activists, nevertheless, Ward was a deeply controversial determine.
In March, Ward shared along with her tons of of hundreds of followers that she had been recognized with stage 4 colon most cancers after routine blood work.
Ward’s oncologist suggested her that aggressive chemotherapy might lengthen her life by two and a half years; in any other case, she could be “useless by Christmas,” Ward stated in a podcast look in July.
“My surgeon and the oncologist are 100% pimps. Not of ladies, of chemo. They love that hoe,” Ward stated in an Instagram video, suggesting her docs 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 distinct route.
“I’m very anti all of that,” Ward stated in one other TikTok she created from 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 could be following: periods in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, “magnetic” therapies, “ozone” therapies, 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 Might Get Somebody Killed.”
“She genuinely appears to imagine that chemotherapy doesn’t work and that her unproven various therapies will work and that she’s going to beat this. She is stating this all to her big viewers of devoted followers. So not solely is that this doubtless going to kill her, however there’s a very good likelihood it’s going to kill another person too,” Watson stated within the video. “Somebody goes to get a most cancers prognosis and they’re going to see these movies and say, ‘Oh, wow, she appears so wholesome and glad. She’s beating most cancers. I’m going to try 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 might be like, no matter, if you wish to resolve 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 gaggle 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 evening, leaping into the ocean, and sleeping moist on a seashore.
“I opted for a mastermind crash course of breaking down each single one in every of these folks via seeing them the place they’re to assist deliver them to the place I see them sooner or later,” Ward wrote in an Instagram put up concerning the debacle.
Following her most cancers prognosis, Ward stated she would deliver her followers alongside via 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 are feeling like is best for you,” Ward instructed her mentor, motivational speaker and podcaster Ed Mylett, in July.
She described present process a collection of unscientific various therapies for most cancers, together with consuming eight to 12 juices a day (“I’m simply overdosing my physique in vitamin”), spending time day by day in a hyperbaric chamber, utilizing a “biocharger” machine, and taking excessive doses of vitamin C thrice per 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, displaying 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 affix a web based prayer session for her restoration. “She is preventing tougher than ever and we want your assist,” it learn.
Two days later, the account confirmed Ward had died.
“Jessie Lee’s love was a strong power that touched every of you deeply. She instilled unwavering perception, plain religion, and a powerful want so that you can rework your desires into actuality in each coronary heart she reached,” a put up on the Fb web page learn. “The legacy of Jessie Lee lives on ceaselessly via all of us guided by the invaluable classes she taught us.”
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