Tom Floren and Hillary Floren published an add on their magazine Sun City Woman, looking for people to buy into their magazine as a "franchise" this is the way it read in their magazine they claimed they would teach me everything there was about publishing this magazine and that experience was not necessary.
We met at a local restaurant in El Paso Tom Floren and Klint McKinney sat down and explained how their magazine was a solid investment and how I could recover my investment in the first or second publication, Tom claimed that her wife Hillary was about to quit her job as a newscaster at KVIA chanel 7 so she could dedicate her time to the magazine, Klint McKinney claimed that he was an expert salesman with lots of experience with the Tony Robbins team.
They showed me contracts reflecting thousands of dollars for the next publication (later I learned most of these were trades for services they needed). Hillary Then made her appearance to confirm she was involved in the magazine, They claimed heaving publications in Deming, Farmington, Las Cruces and Ruidoso New Mexico. Tom assured me they would give me intensive training for one week on a classroom environment, one week hands on sales training and one week reinforcement by Tom Floren.
I gave them a check for $25,000 dollars, I got my sister to quit her job in San Diego and moved her to Tucson, I advertised in the Tucson newspaper and help wanted.com, cost was adding up fast, I got a loan from the bank and cashed my life insurance, almost everything I had.
Training started in a local hotel in El Paso, Klint McKinney was the instructor, he seated in front of everybody and started reading from a sales book, he was hard to understand, he kept taking pain killers and sometimes he was incoherent, the days went by and nobody touched the subject about distribution and sales plan, they never talked about the mechanics of an add, when I asked them they kept saying it would come. The training ended and I kept asking when are we going to make some sales appointments? Klint stated that cold calling was the best method, since I have no experience in advertising I reluctantly accepted his explanation.
I contacted a distributor in Tucson to see what it would cost to start with 200 sites because I was still unable to get answers from these people.
Finally we met in Tucson, Klint was Still popping pain killers, sweating heavy and making me think we should be taking him to the hospital, we started going door to door getting the same answer, please make an appointment! I got together with a nephew who has profound advertising experience and made an appointment with a man that spends about $60,000 monthly on advertising and is a personal friend of his, Klint's performance was extremely bad, after we walked out, I decided to Call the Tony Robbins team and confirm his past employment history, he did work there but for less than two weeks.
The magazine was supposed to have a website where you could read the latest issues, time kept passing and there was never a finished website. We went calling on a friend of mine who owns a car dealership, Klint started making false claims, he said we would have 1000 sites and that we would hand deliver 4000 magazines a month, that was it for me, I told him I would never claim more sites or circulation, we kept calling on people and we made a sale for a beauty salon, then Klint decided to cut the week short and go back to El Paso so he could attend his son's baseball game.
I agreed to give Tom a couple of months to get me my money back, when hi didn't I filled a lawsuit, we settled out of court, he was supposed to give me payments, the first one came in ok, the second Hillary Floren gave me a bouncing check, then they just refused to pay, I refilled the lawsuit and got a judgement, they claim they have no money and refuse to pay, they both have nice jobs, nice house, cars etc etc.
Now I have my doubts that they had any other magazines in other towns, Tom has supposedly sold his magazine and is no longer involved in it, but you go to the website and his name still appears in it.
0 comments