Mortal Danger

launched with the company.”
    John and Kate attended Mannatech conventions and sold the tape and other educational brochures and booklets they’d created to help associates sell the products with correct information. At the same time, they produced a CD-ROM with Ed DeMarco, Kate’s brother-in-law. They called it “Your Own Diet.” The company liked it so much that they remarketed it as “The Mannatech Optimal Health Plan.”
    Although they left Mannatech for a year or so, they returned to the company in 1996.
    Signing on with serious commitment meant that they would be gone from home more. At this point, the company saw John and Kate as perfect candidates to represent Mannatech on a speaking tour around America. They were attractive, extremely personable, and intelligent.
    John was an excellent salesman. He told Kate that he could be whatever or whoever someone needed him to be just to “close a sale.”
    Dwight and Susan Havener held top positions in Mannatech in the southeastern states, and they invited Kate and John to visit them in Jupiter, Florida, just north of Palm Beach. John seemed to have no qualms about returning to Florida, but he flatly refused to go without Kate.
    In many ways, it turned out to be a great trip. The Haveners had a wonderful estate on the water with its own guest cabin that was nicer than most people’s homes. Jupiter drew many millionaires. Burt Reynolds had his home and theater there, and it was heady to be guests in such a posh environment.
    At first, the visit went well, and Susan Havener particularly liked John. She was amazed by his knowledge and his charisma.
    “John convinced the Haveners that we were the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Kate remembered. “Their business was already booming, and he assured them it would ‘explode’ with us joining their organization.”
    But John bruised this first impression by going too far, too fast. He was full of ideas on how to improve Mannatech, most of them criticism about the current corporate structure. It didn’t seem to occur to him that the company was already a huge success the way it was currently functioning. Why should they want to change it? Kate felt embarrassed as she saw their hosts exchange glances, obviously irritated with John’s grandiose plans for changes in Mannatech.
    It was clear he had walked in with an ego almost beyond comprehension and wanted to start at the top. Even so, aside from his unsought critique, the Haveners could see that John might well be an asset as a consultant/ lecturer. His charm might have a tendency to tarnish on very long acquaintance, but on one-night stands around the United States and Canada, he would be very imposing.
    The Haveners had some vitally important meetings set in New Jersey, and they asked John to accompany them on a driving trip there. They were taken aback when he flatly refused to go.
    “He wouldn’t go,” Kate said. “It was almost impossibleto make him realize that, for the moment at least, he wasn’t the boss.”
    Beyond dismissing Mannatech’s business structure as not nearly as profitable as it could be if they followed his suggestions, John insisted that the Haveners owed him $1,500. Kate was mortified.
    Despite that, Dwight and Susan Havener continued to believe that Kate and John would be an asset to Mannatech. They were sent on a lecture tour extolling the benefits of the company’s four main products, particularly Ambrotose, the lead product, “a glyconutritional dietary supplement ingredient consisting of monosaccharides, or sugar molecules,” according to Mannatech.
    Critics doubted that Ambrotose had any health benefits, because they believed the human body lacked the kind of enzymes needed to break down the plant fibers in the highly touted supplement.
    The differing opinions ended in a stalemate year after year, and a decade later, ABC’s 20/20 aired a show on the controversy.
    But John and Kate both felt it had benefits. And if it wasn’t as much of a cure-all as some believed, it didn’t harm anyone outside the pocketbook or if substituted for more accepted medical care in the treatment of life-threatening diseases. Mannatech continued to insist that its representatives refrain from promises that their products targeted and cured particular illnesses.
    The couple from Oregon was a hit. Each of them was the very picture of health, vivacious and encouraging, and they didn’t employ any hard-sell tactics. They didn’t have to.