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This is part six of a series of posts about successful fad diet site Kimkins.com and its mysterious and controversial creator, “Kimmer,” or Heidi Kimberly Diaz. My wife Catherine was Heidi’s business partner in the founding of the Kimkins.com site. You can find the first post and table of contents here.

Heidi spent July and August of 2006 alternating between manic promotion of the Kimkins.com site and periodic frustration over the demands of her members on her time and attention. By mid-August, Catherine had seen enough that her initial respect for Heidi was a distant memory and she was increasingly unhappy in the partnership. She was walking on eggshells to avoid unnecessarily triggering Heidi’s irritable moods.

This unhappiness accompanied a worry that had been forming in Catherine’s mind. In negotiating the partnership agreement, Catherine and Heidi had agreed in their contract that Heidi could buy out Catherine’s interest in the partnership at any point in the first 12 months of the Kimkins.com business for a certain lump sum. After 12 months had elapsed, the contractual buyout price would change to an amount equal to Catherine’s share of the profits for the trailing 12-month period immediately preceding the buyout.

Kimkins.com had exceeded expectations in two ways: it was both more profitable, and far more work, than either Heidi or Catherine had anticipated. Kimkins.com was more than a full-time job for both of them. The bottom line was this: because of profits that exceeded far exceeded expectations, if Heidi bought Catherine out in month 12, she would pay just a small fraction of what the buyout would cost in month 13.

By late August, Catherine had become thoroughly sick of Heidi, her moods, and the way she did business. There was no love lost; it was obvious that Heidi was only tolerating Catherine’s presence and influence in business decisions because of the work and technical expertise Catherine was contributing. A suspicion was becoming a certainty: Heidi would avail herself of Catherine’s presence as a business partner until nearly the end of the 12-month period and then buy her out.

Catherine decided to be proactive and demand a renegotiation of the buyout clause. Catherine told Heidi that she could not continue to devote all her time in return for such an undervalued interest in the business, and she requested a more equitable buyout. She felt that there was a good chance that Heidi would opt to buy her out right away, and she looked forward to getting out of the partnership. As she anticipated, and to her relief, Heidi soon announced that she was exercising her option to buy Catherine out.

The details of the transaction were set out and all the business assets were conveyed at the end of September 2006. Between her share of the site profits during her tenure and the buyout lump sum, and based on a 50-hour average workweek during the time she was involved with Kimkins.com, Catherine made just over $10 an hour for her time launching and developing the business. However, the education and life lessons she acquired were tremendously valuable.

Catherine was happy to be out of the partnership on what seemed at least to be civil terms. Heidi had made a show of being polite and gracious toward Catherine. It’s amazing how women who dislike one another can go through the motions of being nice, but Catherine had no illusions about Heidi’s real feelings. She was, however, somewhat taken aback when she realized that her Kimkins.com membership had been cut off a few days after the buyout was final. Shrugging it off as Heidi’s prerogative, Catherine moved on with other projects.

Then Heidi did something so inexplicably vindictive and downright wrong that Catherine has not forgiven her: she attempted to smear Catherine’s honesty and integrity to Kimkins.com’s most successful affiliate, Jimmy Moore.

To provide a little background, when Jimmy joined Kimkins.com as an affiliate he requested payment by check instead of PayPal. Since she knew Jimmy would be a valuable affiliate, Catherine made an exception to the PayPal-only rule and agreed to cut a check for him every month and mail it from our home in Europe. The final affiliate payments from Catherine’s last month with Kimkins went out on October 5, 2006, and Catherine mailed Jimmy’s check as usual.

On October 7, 2006 Jimmy wrote to Heidi to inquire about his affiliate payment arrangements now that Catherine was gone.

Heidi replied, with a copy to Catherine, on October 8 [emphasis added]:

She [Catherine] assured me that all affiliates were paid at the end of September. She sent me an Excel spreadsheet which I have been unable to open so I don’t have an accounting of September expenses, including affiliates. I hope everyone was paid!

Catherine responded to both Heidi and Jimmy, again October 8:

The check went out as it usually does last week to Jimmy. All the other affiliates who were owed money by the Kimkins affiliate program were paid via PayPal, even the affiliates who had not yet reached their minimum, as per our agreement Heidi. I will forward the PayPal receipts to you if you’d like since you seem to be uncertain about whether the payout took place.

Heidi, this is the first time you have followed up with me about your access issue with Google spreadsheets since you mentioned the day of the Kimkins handover transaction that you had a one-time problem logging in. I had assumed that it was resolved since I had not heard from you! Please let me know what email address you are using to access Google spreadsheets and I’ll make sure you can get in or send you a file copy instead.

I am frankly surprised, Heidi, that you would use such a tone about the issue when you have not informed me that you were still unable to get into Google spreadsheets. My receipts and books regarding Kimkins are open and if you need further documentation about ANYTHING let me know.

Jimmy, it was a total pleasure working with you! As in the past, if you do not receive your check by the third week in October let me know and I’ll get it reissued to you. The amount for September was $287.52. Heidi has possession of the affiliate program and database if you need details. If she is still using the same software, affiliates have a log in and are able to go in and see their reports at any time. I’m sure Heidi would be happy to help you out with that if you need your log in reissued.

To which Heidi replied on the same date [emphasis added]:

Jimmy, I apologize for you being in the middle. I received the password for the affiliate program and no training or guidelines. From what I see you earned $655 last month, but Catherine has a different figure. I’ll research it and make up and difference owing.

Catherine was shocked. We wondered, why would Heidi lie about such a thing? There was nothing to be gained by attempting to damage Catherine’s reputation in this way and, with Catherine in the know about many of Heidi’s lies and manipulations, it would seem that there was much to lose. My opinion is that some people are just wired that way — to react first by lying instead of telling the truth, and by being mean rather than being kind.

Catherine had had it, and after defending herself and offering full disclosure of all financial records to Jimmy (an offer that stands to this day) she wrote to Heidi on October 8:

I am really aghast at how you are behaving with Jimmy and I simply do not understand it. I have always been 100% honest and forthright in my business dealings with you and the Kimkins affiliates and I have the records to prove it, so in the end you are going to make yourself look bad to try to imply otherwise.

If this slanderous behavior continues on your part I will have no choice but to defend myself with the truth. If necessary, I will publish a full accounting of our business dealings and records (minus the members’ identifying details of course) and forward it to our affiliates, the IRS, and Social Security Disability Insurance authorities.

To the best of Catherine’s knowledge Heidi backed away from her smear campaign with Jimmy once Catherine stood up for herself in this way.

The check, of course, arrived in the mail late and was cashed by Jimmy without incident.

NEXT: Kimkins.com Part VII - Business Lessons Learned

I had intended that Part V of this series would deal with an issue that arose during July and August of 2006. The issue, and the doubts it engendered, impacted the contractual relationship between my wife, Catherine, and her business partner Heidi Kimberly Diaz (”Kimmer” of Kimkins.com). It does not, however, have much direct bearing on the current controversies and questions surrounding Kimmer and Kimkins.com. Upon review and careful consideration, I have decided that I do not have enough documentation and source material to discuss that particular issue publicly at this time. Instead, Part V will shed light on the guerilla marketing tactics that resulted in the “celebrities on Kimkins” rumors.

Looking back through the email record, it’s remarkable how much progress was made in the development and marketing of Kimkins.com in the two months post-launch. Between the June 2006 launch and mid-August, Catherine implemented Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing pay-per-click campaigns, an opt-in follow email list for newsletters written by Heidi and member contributors, a Flash-based member chat program, and an affiliate program.

While Catherine was developing these new features, she was also handling technical and payment customer service for members and dealing with ongoing script bugs and technical issues arising from the inadequacy of the webhosting server and its subsequent upgrade. Heidi/Kimmer was spending a great deal of time posting actively on the Kimkins.com forums every day. Also, Heidi was continuing to do substantial guerilla marketing on Craigslist, Freecycle, and similar sites. Kimkins.com had become more than a full-time job for both women.

Heidi’s marketing activities were beyond the scope of her role per the partnership agreement, and the extent of Heidi’s actions were at times unclear to Catherine. Catherine continued to be puzzled and somewhat troubled by how driven Heidi seemed to market the site — particularly given the fact that the organic search engine optimization, pay-per-click campaigns, and affiliate program were getting good results. The site was profitable and growing. It seemed odd that Heidi was so extremely motivated in her marketing efforts if she was using her share of the profits for charitable purposes. At times, Heidi would complain about the burdens of advising Kimkins.com members while continuing the marketing activities seemingly without pause. The ebook remained unwritten.

In August, while evaluating search engine rankings and inbound links for the Kimkins.com site, Catherine ran across a rumor on a message board that Jessica Alba was doing the Kimkins diet. She suspected that it was a rumor planted by Heidi, but she was not sure. Catherine suggested that I write a quick piece on the rumor on a celebrity blog I ran. I did a post, “Is Jessica Alba Doing the Kimkins Diet?” or something to that effect, and that was the end of it for a few weeks.

Then, on August 13, 2006, Heidi excitedly pointed Catherine to my blog item, apparently unaware that it was I who had written it. Catherine told Heidi point blank that the blog was mine and asked Heidi if the original rumor had, in fact, been planted by her. The following are direct quotes from Heidi drawn from emails dated August 13/2006:

Yes! I’ve planted “seeds”, 1 post here and there, on teen sites. I went to one celebrity site where you an “ask a question” and mine was “I heard Jessica Alba lost weight for her tour by doing a new diet called Kimkins. Is that true?”

I don’t care if it’s one of Martin’s sites, LOL. We have “almost credible” information that Jessica Alba did Kimkins. We can certainly exploit, I mean, post on the blog, website, newsletter, Jimmy?

I knew it wasn’t Jessica Alba. She doesn’t know Kimkins from a bag of beans.

In a subsequent email:

One of the foster boys has a huge crush on her [Alba] and she’s “young” — figured she’d be the perfect name to drop at various teen and celebrity sites. I do one post only, nothing obvious. I’ve done a couple other celebrities also.

Heidi justified the fake rumors thusly (again from an email on August 13, 2006):

Everyone size 2 girl on the Red Carpet does Kimkins or KE a week before. Whether they stick a Kimkins tag on it I can’t say, but they “do” Kimkins.

An Internet search reveals that Kimmer or someone on her behalf (as NikkiLuvsFun) appeared to still be pushing the fake rumor late last autumn:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20061014161537AAs4n7p

Next: Kimkins.com Part VI - The Partnership Buyout and the Post-Buyout Backstabbing

This post is part of a series about the Kimkins diet and its controversial, secretive creator, Kimmer, aka Heidi Diaz or Kim Drake. My wife Catherine was Heidi’s founding partner when Kimkins.com started and the business partnership taught her some harsh lessons. Meanwhile, the Kimkins controversy is ongoing and new developments happen daily. You can find the first post in the series, along with the table of contents, here.

Over the past few days, with Catherine’s permission I’ve been able to delve into her email records (thank God for Gmail) to establish a more accurate chronology of the dates of start-up. For the better part of a year, Catherine has tried to put the details of the failed business partnership out of her mind while she works on more productive things, and so her memory was less than clear on the date of startup. Here’s what I’ve established:

April 18, 2006 — Kimmer started the very popular “Ask Kimmer!” thread on LowCarbFriends.com (LCF).

April 19 or 20, 2006 — Seeing the immediate popularity of the thread, Catherine first contacted “Kimmer” through LCF private message to explore the idea of an ebook and a site. Kimmer/Heidi Diaz wrote back on April 20 and an agreement in principle was negotiated.

April 22, 2006 — With the agreement of Heidi Diaz, Kimkins.com was registered in Catherine’s name at GoDaddy.com.

April 25, 2006 — The partnership agreement was signed by Catherine and Heidi Diaz. In the following weeks there was a lot of back-and-forth communication about the site and the ebook. The site was built and Catherine helped to assemble a lot of content for the ebook from Kimmer’s old LCF posts, but the project stalled out somewhat due to what seemed to be a case of writer’s block on Heidi’s end. As people have noted, the promised ebook never did materialize.

June 11, 2006 — As a result of antagonism and drama at LowCarbFriends.com, Kimkins.com was launched without the ebook and Kimmer announced her departure from LCF and the launch of her new site. Her supporters started joining immediately.

June 14, 2006 — Kimmer told a prospective member in email (blind carbon copy to Catherine), “My portion of the funds are going to help my foster kids, teenage boys who need ’stuff’ when they move out at 18 — security deposits, getting the electricity turned on, get a microwave, towels, etc.” She had already announced on the Kimkins.com boards that all her share of the profits were going to foster kids. Catherine felt right away that this was a knee-jerk reaction to criticism about the membership fee, and she wondered whether Kimmer was going to hold herself to the commitment.

Freecycle:

Within about ten days of site launch, Heidi got involved in some aggressive marketing tactics. She told Catherine that she had listed some household items she didn’t need anymore on the local Freecycle, with Kimkins.com in her signature. She apparently spent a lot of time convincing some people who expressed interest that they should join. Then she decided to try listing more free things — offers for giveaways that did not exist — on other Freecycles in other cities to generate more leads for the site. It turned out that she was posing as a satisfied Kimkins.com customer, a mom giving away used Little Tykes toys, and this crossed a line in Catherine’s mind between “guerilla marketing” and unethical business practices.

Catherine was not sure how to approach the issue with Heidi because Heidi appeared to be so anxious to make the site a big overnight success. In Catherine’s opinion, Kimkins.com was doing just fine under its own steam and it had lots of legitimate word-of-mouth advertising. Furthermore, Catherine was doing search engine optimization work which would bring longterm sustainable site traffic. It seemed strange to Catherine that Heidi — who, on the site, was just giving advice like she always had, and who had stated that all her money was going to a good cause, was so manically motivated to hype the site. She tried to gently suggest that Heidi lay off the Freecycle tactics and just relax while the site grew on its own.

Within a week, on June 26, 2006, Catherine received a demand from GoDaddy to explain the Freecycle posting Heidi had been doing, with the threat of revocation of the domain name registration for spamming. Catherine insisted to Heidi that she has to stop the Freecycle spamming or risk losing the business. Heidi agreed, and apologized for what she portrayed as just overenthusiasm.

The demands and anxiety about site promotion continued from Heidi. Catherine’s original expectations were that the site’s growth would be limited by Heidi’s desire for privacy and refusal to do personal appearances. She was not sure where all the promotion was supposed to lead if Heidi was not willing to make the talk show and interview rounds to promote the diet. Between the demands of troubleshooting the new site, responding to customer service requests, and then dealing with Heidi’s aggressive promotion tactics and their fallout, Catherine was starting to become disillusioned. She now feels, in retrospect, that the Freecycle situation was the red flag that should have made her demand that Heidi buy her out. As it happened, it was two more months until things came to a head.

The Before and After Pictures:

I felt that there was something off about the before and after pictures the first time I saw them in July of 2006. As I recall it, I said to Catherine, “Look, these aren’t the same people.” Catherine has always had a hard time with faces (to her embarassment, she’ll walk past our accountant or her hairdresser on the street without a second glance). Also, she knew that dozens of people had successfully followed Kimkins to lose weight at LCF, so why would Heidi make up fake stories?

Heidi had a back story for Catherine about every before and after testimonial she produced. However, it has since been pointed out by observant people that some of the early before and after pictures appear to have been faked and stolen.

One of the after pictures Heidi provided, an after of “Jackie,” turned out to be an 80’s model by the name of Louise Vyent. It seems like Heidi had cold feet about “Jackie” and I believe that this before and after was not used until after Catherine was gone. My review of the email record revealed some remarkable (in hindsight) statements from Heidi to Catherine about “Jackie.” These statements are taken directly from Heidi’s emails to Catherine:

July 19, 2006: “BTW, Jackie is my boys’ therapist. Tammy is my sister’s manicurist, she’s a hoot! She was so impressed when my sister lost 70 lb she had to give Kimkins a shot.”

July 19, 2006: “I’m sorry but we can’t use Jackie. Her husband thinks since she’s a “professional” it would be harmful for her to appear on a commercial website. Ditz. Oh well.”

July 25, 2006: “I’m also still working on Jackie’s husband. He’s a man’s man, if you know what I mean. The approach is different. Dummy.”

About “Deane” (whose after picture is the blonde in a graduation cap and gown):

July 25, 2006: “I think we found the girl for our next newsletter. It’s beyond impressive! She’s a lurker from LCF. I coached her via email. You pronounce her name Duhnay.”

Christin, whose real Kimkins success was the subject of a recent Woman’s World cover story, has still not commented on Heidi’s alleged refusal to meet with her when Christin was in Los Angeles. To this day, I am not aware of anyone who can claim to know “Kimmer” in person.

UPDATE: See many of the most controversial Kimkins before and after pictures here.

Next: Kimkins.com Part V - Celebrities on Kimkins?

By all accounts, low carb blogger Jimmy Moore is truly a nice guy. He lost an astounding amount of weight following a low carb diet and started blogging about it in April 2005. He has made many public appearances.

Bloggers and Internet marketers could spend days examining Jimmy’s blogging, linking, and marketing techniques and it would be time well spent. The man is a brilliant natural Internet marketer who has built a huge following of dieters — targeted, motivated, repeat customers for the businesses Jimmy promotes.

My wife Catherine MacDonald, who was a founding partner of Kimkins.com, has a great deal of respect, admiration, and affection for Jimmy. As she and Heidi Diaz were dissolving their Kimkins.com partnership, Heidi attempted to smear Catherine’s management of the Kimkins.com affiliate program to Jimmy, and Catherine has never forgiven her for it.

Jimmy Moore’s association with Kimkins.com stretches back nearly to the beginning. Catherine, aware of Jimmy’s pull, contacted him about Kimkins.com as the site was launching and arranged for some links back and forth. Jimmy expressed interest in an affiliate relationship, and so when the Kimkins.com affiliate program was launched Catherine invited him to sign up right away. He did, and a successful affiliate relationship began. Using his very effective “pre-sell” marketing techniques, Jimmy routinely had conversion ratios of 1:30 to 1:40 on the traffic he sent Kimkins.com’s way.

Catherine’s association with Kimkins.com and Heidi Diaz ended in September 2006, and so I have no direct knowledge of the recent affiliate sales numbers. However, judging from his search engine rankings, the ramped up marketing blitz associated with his own switch to the Kimkins diet, and the hype that resulted from the recent Woman’s World article, I would conservatively estimate that Jimmy has pulled in at least $15,000 in affiliate commissions from Kimkins.com.

Yesterday, after I revealed the facts about his Kimmer interview here on the blog, Jimmy stepped up to the plate and openly admited that his first Kimmer interview was done through email, not in person or on the phone. He says that he had a long telephone call with “Kimmer” yesterday and they have a telephone interview scheduled for his podcast late next week — a case of strike while the iron is … uh, cold and with a well-prepared story. Jimmy asked Kimmer for an in-person interview to help clear up the controversy about her identity and weight loss claims, but she once again declined. To my knowledge, nobody interested in the Kimkins.com debate claims that they have met Kimmer/Heidi Diaz/Kim Drake in person.

If Kimmer/Heidi Diaz is truly who she says she is but for whatever reason will not participate in public appearances or video appearances, why not agree to meet Jimmy in person for an audio interview? She could show him some ID to prove that she is in fact Heidi Kimberly Diaz, and let him describe the meeting and vouch for her authenticity. They could have a no published pictures agreement, and Jimmy could be the first person who could say that yes, he has met Kimmer in person and she is everything she claims to be.

Jimmy is an astute marketer and is playing this whole thing very well — but as a decent guy with substantial integrity, he’s got to be having some serious doubts about Kimmer himself now.

This post is third in a series (you can find the first post and the table of contents here, and the second post here) about the multimillion-dollar Internet diet marketing phenomenon that is Kimkins.com — and its controversial diet guru, a mysterious woman known to most people only as “Kimmer.” My wife, Catherine MacDonald, was a founding partner of the Kimkins.com startup, and I’m sharing the story of this business venture as a case study in business partnerships.

SEPTEMBER 2007 UPDATE: We now have real pictures of Kimmer. As many people suspected, she is a morbidly obese woman — not the svelte 118-pound diet success she has claimed to be. See the pictures here: Kimmer surveillance picture, Kimmer at the Kimkins.com mail box, more surveillance Kimmer photos.

In 1993 — almost 15 years ago — New Yorker published what has become one of its most famous cartoons. One dog, sitting at a computer keyboard, says to another dog, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog.”

This post is about the topic that is at the root of the raging Kimkins/Kimmer controversy. Who is Kimmer? Did she really lose 200 pounds and is she really slim now? Why are there only four known “after” pictures and why do they all look different?

This is also about the way that the Internet has changed how people do business. My wife Catherine founded Kimkins.com with a woman she had never met before, and has never met to this day. This is not unusual — in the information age, people routinely enter into contracts with one another without meeting and sometimes without even talking on the telephone.

Kimmer has always been secretive and evasive about her personal information and photographs. As a private individual posting at the LowCarbFriends.com boards, it was reasonable for her to defend her right to privacy. However, she now uses her story and what she claims are her photos to market a million-dollar weight loss business. There are a disturbing number of unanswered questions and inconsistencies, and a growing number of consumers and dieters are demanding the truth.

Although the recent Woman’s World cover article names the creator/owner of Kimkins.com as “Kim Drake,” (a pseudonym Kimmer had once told Catherine to use for publicity purposes) we’re quite certain that the real name of the woman known as Kimmer is Heidi Kimberly Diaz:

• Heidi Diaz is the name Kimmer gave Catherine and the name she used on their Kimkins.com partnership contract.
• Heidi Diaz is the name that was on the PayPal account to which Kimmer’s share of the website profits were deposited.
• Heidi Diaz is the telephone directory name associated with the phone number Kimmer used for telephone calls with Catherine and has listed on press releases — (951) 808-0482. USSearch.com databases associate the name Heidi Kimberly Diaz, age 49, with the telephone number and telephone directory address.

The pictures below show one of Kimmer’s “before” pictures on the left and a picture on a Classmates.com profile under the name Heidi (Miller) Diaz. They are clearly the same woman on the same day:

In the five or so years that Kimmer has been discussing her weight loss success and acting as a role model and mentor, she has published only two “before” pictures and four “after” photographs. The after pictures are remarkably different from one another:

The second photo is Kimmer’s original LowCarbFriends.com “after” photo (which she was still using at the launch of Kimkins.com). Kimmer came up with the third photo about a month after the Kimkins.com launch after much pleading for recent after pictures from Kimkins.com members. The final picture on the right is a recent picture from the Woman’s World article, and it is now the only “after” photo on the Kimkins.com site. Bizarrely, a Kimmer before and after combo with an “after” of a heavily-airbrushed woman in a leopardskin blouse (I am unable to post the picture here because of copyright issues) was also published in the same Woman’s World article.

To the best of my knowledge, nobody who has interacted with Kimmer online claims to have met her in person. Whenever Kimkins.com members have requested seminars or get-togethers, Kimmer has declined. There is a Kimkins sea cruise being planned for February 2008, but no commitment that Kimmer will be onboard. This is odd behavior for a woman who trades on her personality and life experience to provide motivation to her customers.

Questions have been raised about well-known low carb diet blogger Jimmy Moore’s interview of Kimmer — did he interview Kimmer in person? The answer is no. This interview was arranged by Catherine, via email, and conducted between Jimmy and Kimmer also by email. Jimmy sent his questions to Catherine, who forwarded them to Kimmer, and Kimmer then emailed the answers back to Jimmy. This interview fueled Jimmy’s successful affiliate relationship with Kimkins.com which is still ongoing. It’s worth noting that the old Kimmer “after” picture (seated black blouse shot) Jimmy used to have on his site has entirely disappeared, replaced by the red dress “after” shot.

As I write this, the “who is Kimmer?” question is being hotly debated on several diet message boards including LowCarbFriends.com. There are a number of people who are aware of Heidi K. Diaz’s address, contact information, and other personal details, and I suspect that investigative journalism or private investigation will soon bring about the disclosure of new information about her identity and the authenticity of her weight loss claims. On the Internet in 2007, it’s no longer possible to hide behind a monitor like the New Yorker cartoon dog.

UPDATE: Jimmy Moore confirms that his Kimmer interview was conducted in email and announces an upcoming podcast telephone interview. Once again, “Kimmer” declines a personal appearance.

Next: Kimkins.com Part IV - The Kimkins.com Early Days

This post is second in a series (you can find the first post and the table of contents here) about the multimillion-dollar Internet diet marketing phenomenon that is Kimkins.com — and its controversial diet guru, a mysterious woman known to most people only as “Kimmer.” My wife, Catherine MacDonald, was a founding partner of the Kimkins.com startup, and I’m sharing the story of this business venture as a case study in business partnerships.

Around 2002, a regular poster known as “Kimmer” started to develop a following of dieters on the low carb diet forum LowCarbFriends.com (LCF). People were impressed with her weight loss success story — according to her, an incredible 200 pound loss in 11 months. How did she do it? A low carb, low fat, and very low calorie diet consisting mostly of diet soft drinks, chicken breast, eggs, water-packed tuna, and a negligible amount of salad: a diet that was eventually dubbed “Kimkins.” That the restrictive diet works, if followed, is indisputable. Dozens of LCF posters lost substantial amounts of weight, at least temporarily, following Kimmer’s advice.

In 2004, Catherine joined LowCarbFriends.com and and became a faithful daily reader of the forums. She watched as a groundswell of interest in Kimmer and Kimkins continued to build. My wife’s impressions of Kimmer were of a straight-shooting — but extremely polarizing — charismatic writer. Kimmer had a knack for summing up her thoughts and advice in concise, consistent catchphrases.

By 2006, Kimmer was conducting her own extremely popular “Ask Kimmer” threads at LCF in the midst of vocal opposition from “the Kimkins naysayers,” as she called them. Her detractors cast doubt upon the safety or advisability of the very low calorie diet championed by Kimmer. They pointed out that Kimmer only had a single out-of-date “after” photograph; it was implied that she might not even be telling the truth about her dramatic weight loss.

Catherine had been involved in online marketing for years and recognized an opportunity in Kimmer’s mushrooming popularity. She knew that Kimmer did not have the technical know how or the capital to build the infrastructure necessary to market “Kimkins,” so she wrote to Kimmer and, in exchange for a 50% interest, offered the money, programming, marketing, and technical support necessary to launch a diet site — Kimkins.com.

Kimmer accepted the offer. The terms of a contract were hammered out and a site was built, all in just a couple of weeks. Catherine worked 18-hour days assembling content and programming. The workload only increased with technical support for a rush of dozens of paid members who joined the moment the site launched in April 2006 — the result of a purely word-of-mouth viral marketing campaign conducted by Kimmer’s fans. Not even the LCF board owners’ ban policy, meant to silence any mention of the new competing site, could keep the news of Kimkins.com from spreading.

The site launched with a $14.95 membership fee, and the $300 of out-of-pocket expenses for the Kimkins startup was covered within hours. It was apparent within the first day or two that the site had a good chance of becoming a business success. In the buildup to launch, Kimmer had repeatedly expressed concern to Catherine about whether or not Kimmer’s time would be adequately compensated by her share of the site’s revenues. The clear early indications of profitability were good news.

Then, out of the blue, Kimmer did something that shocked Catherine and took her completely by surprise. Apparently stung by criticism of the membership fee, Kimmer publicly announced that all her share of the proceeds from Kimkins.com was going to go into a fund to help the foster kids who were placed in her home. Not only did Catherine feel that this unexpected announcement discounted the value of the very real work that she and Kimmer were putting into the site, but it appeared to contradict Catherine’s earlier understanding of Kimmer’s plans for the income should the site become a success.

How can one criticize such generosity? Catherine bit her tongue. The doubts had only just begun.

Next: Kimkins.com Part III - Kimmer: Who Is She Really?

SEPTEMBER 2007 UPDATE: We now have real pictures of Kimmer. As many people suspected, she is a morbidly obese woman — not the svelte 118-pound diet success she has claimed to be. See the pictures here: Kimmer surveillance picture, Kimmer at the Kimkins.com mail box, more surveillance Kimmer photos.

If you have been in a supermarket checkout line this month, you may have seen a headline on the cover of Woman’s World about an Internet diet phenomenon called Kimkins (the cover breathlessly reads “Better Than Gastric Bypass!”). This cover story helped to fuel over $1 million in sales revenues this month alone for the website Kimkins.com.

Kimkins.com is the home of the Kimkins diet and its mysterious creator, “Kimmer.” Depending on whom you’re talking to in the diet world, Kimmer is a weight loss messiah or a dishonest charlatan. I think maybe she’s both, and I have a unique insight into the controversy.

You see, at the 2006 launch of Kimkins.com my wife Catherine was a 50% partner. The other 50% was owned by the woman known to the rest of the world as “Kimmer.”

The partnership became a series of twists, surprises, triumphs and disappointments that provided a challenging but worthwhile business education to us both — and it’s one hell of an interesting story to boot.

Over the next few weeks I’m going to present the Kimkins.com story in installments as a case study in business partnerships. Tentatively, the road map looks like this:

• Kimkins.com Part I - The Kimkins.com Business Partnership Case Study (this post)
• Kimkins.com Part II - What is the Kimkins Diet and How Did Kimkins.com Get Started?
• Kimkins.com Part III - Kimmer: Who Is She Really?
• Kimkins.com Part IV - The Kimkins.com Early Days
• Kimkins.com Part V - Celebrities on Kimkins?
• Kimkins.com Part VI - The Partnership Buyout and the Post-Buyout Backstabbing
• Kimkins.com Part VII - Business Lessons Learned
• Kimkins.com Part VIII - What Now for Kimkins.com?

Stay tuned for a fascinating inside look at a viral marketing success story that may be a house of cards waiting to tumble.

Next: Kimkins.com Part II - What is the Kimkins Diet and How Did Kimkins.com Get Started?