With a name like Beachbody, it isn’t too hard to guess what the company is about. Beach Body is a multilevel marketing company that is dedicated to fitness.
You’re almost surely familiar with their fitness programs: unless you live under a rock, you’ve heard about P90X, Insanity, or Focus T25. These are home-based fitness programs that promise to boost your health, help you lose weight, and get more muscular.
So did I get on board? This explains everything:
Beachbody is a classic “blue ocean” strategy in the multilevel marketing world. There are tons of health and wellness MLMs, so how could you ever make money competing in that cutthroat market?
The founders of Beachbody identified an opening: pretty much every other health, wellness, or weight loss MLM focuses on only half of the weight loss equation.
All the competition sells is products that you consume. As you know, weight loss (or building muscle) is a combination of what you eat, and how active you are.
What if, instead of dietary supplements and meal replacements, you could sell the activity side of that equation?
That genius marketing plan set Beachbody on the path to wild success. The company seems to have mastered the art of capitalizing on fitness workout trends for a few years, then transitioning to a new product.
While search engine traffic trends show “flash in the pan” type behavior for each of their trademark plans, like P90X and Focus T25, you’ll notice that the company staggers these out.
So, just as P90X is becoming old hat, Focus T25 hits it big. The company’s business plan seems to be to iterate through this model indefinitely, always having a few star performer fitness plans that are flagship products at any given time.
Products
In terms of material goods, what Beachbody sells you is a few DVDs and some ancillary supplies to help keep you on track with your workout program, like a training calendar and a nutrition guide.
But really what you pay for is the knowledge. So, what are the training programs like, and are they scientifically based?
Surprisingly, the answer is yes. Though the setup, pitch, and marketing is definitely boilerplate MLM weight loss and fitness material (“Brad lost 50 pounds on this program!”), the workouts make use of some of the more recent advances in exercise physiology.
One of these is the relationship between whole body fitness programs and anabolic hormone levels. Plenty of MLMs sell supplements that claim to boost your testosterone or growth hormone levels, but Beachbody sells a fitness program that will definitely do the same thing without a supplement.
A 1999 review study by researchers at the University of Virginia concluded that the most effective way to boost circulating levels of human growth hormone, which is connected with muscular strength, energy levels, and vitality, is to use a high-intensity training program that lasts for at least ten minutes.
Likewise, for testosterone, a 2005 study by researchers at the University of Connecticut recommended that exercise routines involve a high number of repetitions at moderate resistance, and engage muscles in as much of the body as possible.
The strength routines that Beachbody promotes fit both of these characteristics: they involve a good bit of high-intensity, whole-body strength work that will pump up your growth hormone and testosterone levels for several hours post-workout, no supplements needed.
The other area of burgeoning research that Beachbody taps into is the efficacy of high intensity interval training, sometimes known as HIIT.
Workout programs offered by Beachbody, like Insanity, utilize HIIT-like protocols, which involve short periods of very high intensity exercise, followed by another short rest period before repeating.
An authoritative review conducted by Stephen Boutcher at the University of New South Wales in Australia discusses the benefits of high intensity interval training with respect to weight loss.
According to Boutcher, this type of workout is highly effective at increasing aerobic and anaerobic fitness, but more to the point of weight loss, HIIT training has a profound positive effect on metabolic health, both short-term and long term.
It seems to fight the insulin insensitivity that often accompanies obesity, and which causes numerous health problems. Though more research is needed, high intensity interval training seems to be effective at reducing both subcutaneous fat (the “flabby” fat that makes you look fat) and abdominal fat (the kind inside and in between your organs, which is the kind that makes you physically unhealthy).
Compensation plan
So, the products are innovative, especially in the MLM space, and are based on solid science. Plenty of people get great results from them. What’s the income opportunity look like for you as a distributor?
Beachbody calls their distributors “coaches,” and to become one, you need to pay a sign-up fee of $40. From here on out, you need to pay a recurring $20 monthly fee to stay active, as well as sell at least 50 product volume in sales. Thankfully Beachbody makes it easy; one PV is equal to $1. So, fifty bucks in sales per month to stay eligible for commissions.
You get a 25% kickback on all Beachbody products you or your customers buy, and you can start recruiting coaches to work for you (i.e. become your downline) right away.
The compensation plan is binary, meaning you can only have two first-line distributors below you at one time. Each of these can have two below them, and on downward.
Like with any other MLM, you earn bonuses based on how much money your “team” is spending per month, and these incentives rise with the number of team members you have and the amount of monthly sales you have.
Recap
Right now, Beachbody is one of the best MLMs to get into in the health and wellness space, chiefly due to the fact that its products are at such a competitive advantage over everything else out there.
It’s the undisputed king of selling fitness programs, and their products have been wildly popular in the past. There’s no reason to think that Beachbody can’t keep turning out hit fitness programs.
Just make sure you do your homework and have your business plan in order before you jump in, because without consistent customers, the monthly fees you have to pay will add up pretty quick.
Look, not a Beachbody hater. But if you’re just doing it for the money, there are better ways to kill your day job.
You might like our coaching because it shows you the good life selling to your family and friends.
http://bodynutrition.org/beachbody-review/ http://bodynutritionorg.tumblr.com/post/161871905739
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