Team Beachbody Fact and Fiction

Fact: Beachbody is the 69^th fastest growing company in the United States according to an article in Entrepreneur Magazine, March 2008.

Fact: Beachbody was started by Carl Daikeler and Jon Cogdon with $500,000 borrowed from family and private investors and is now a $250 million company that spends $90 million on marketing annually.

Fiction: Becoming an Independent Beachbody Coach is a get rich quick scheme.

Fact: With a modest investment of time, it takes about four months to start making money and then only about $100 a week to start. When you invest more time, you make substantially more money.

Fiction: Beachbody coaches are part of a pyramid scheme - a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, usually without any product or service being delivered.

Fact: Beachbody coaches market fitness and sell products from their own websites and are rewarded for encouraging people to become members of the Team Beachbody Club, get commissions on the fitness products that they sell and can build a business team where everyone is rewarded for their efforts to promote fitness, weight management and improved quality of life. Network Marketing is a business distribution model that allows a parent multi-level marketing company to market their products directly to consumers by means of relationship referral and direct selling.

Fiction: You have to spend a lot of money to be an Independent Team Beachbody Coach.

Fact: It costs $47.99 to become an Independent Team Beachbody Coach and then $14.95 a month if you decide to continue being a coach. There is no other cost for becoming a coach and the $14.95 monthly fee pays for your own coach website and e-commerce itness product and supplement store.

Fiction: All that you have to do is sign up to be a coach and you will start making money.

Fact: Like any other business (each coach has their own coach business center) you have to work to make money. The more effort you put in, the more money that you will make. Beachbody helps you make money by providing a wealth of information and resources including live and recorded conference calls explaining the company and providing ideas on how to be successful, business building videos, product training sheets to familiarize you with all of the products, success stories, downloadable materials, access to everyone in the management of the company and most of all, your own personal coach to help you build your business.

Fact: The top coach in the company, a now retired school principal, in his first year (which is also the first year of the Beachbody network marketing business model) earned $305,938.00.

For the complete Team Beachbody Statement of Independent Coach Earnings, please click here.

Cathy’s Purpose

Please read this post from the Team Beachbody Message Boards and apply it to your life:

“I was in the chat with Tony Horton the other day. It was very thought provoking. He shared several principles of life and working out.

The one that stuck with me most and really got me thinking was: What is my purpose for working out anyway, and my purpose for life even more importantly, because to me they should compliment one another. His philosophy is really good and may surprise you. “Looking good is not a good reason for working out,” Tony said it. If that’s your goal then when you turn 60, 70 or 80 or whenever you don’t like your looks anymore then what? It’s all temporal, and temporary. So think about you purpose. This will give you the foundation to motivate you to keep working out throughout your life.

Here’s my purpose for life and working out: To love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength and to love my neighbor as myself (my paraphrase). So working out is done so that I can have physical strength to serve my God, my family, and my neighbors - not just half heartedly, but really truly. My purpose is to have life more abundantly. I believe that life is a gift that we need to steward not squander. I want to be my best me. Then my purpose is also going to leave a legacy for my family and those I touch, because they will live healthier, more on fire lives because of what God did through me.

SO WHAT IS YOUR PURPOSE?? and make it one that lasts past your lifetime people! One that makes a difference for eternity even!”

Cathy

Should we be living in zoos?

My daughter and I went to the zoo today and all of the animals are so beautifully housed and fed and every effort is made to recreate their natural habits and to keep them healthy and happy.  Not too fat, not too thin, but eating like they would in their natural habitats and maintaining an ideal weight.  Animals can exercise, get fresh air, sunshine and they aren’t allowed to get overweight or to be housed inappropriately or there would be an outcry from the public.

But when my gaze turned from the animal’s habitats to the walkways and paths for the visitors, I have never seen so many overweight, obese and morbidly obese people in my life.  If 66% of adults in the US are overweight or obese, this morning skewed that percentage some, because it was more like 80% or more who were quite to significantly heavier than their ideal weight.  I saw firsthand why we are the most overweight and obese society in the world.

So what is my point?  Zoo animals are being held in captivity against their “will” probably the only plus being that they actually live longer in most cases in captivity.  No enemies, no disease, good diets, probably supplements, good veterinary care and so forth contribute to their longevity.

We, on the other hand, have lifespans that are shortening and we are not held in captivity.  We make choices as to where we live and how much exercise we get and what type and when.  We eat what we please and when we please and how much we please.  We seek medical care by choice or when we can afford it.

We, too, should be healthy and at our ideal weights, but instead we are not.  I saw people out of breath and struggling to go up paths or to take stairs to exhibits in order to see animals in about as perfect condition as they would be outside of their natural habitats.

We have the largest elephant habitat of any zoo in the country and the elephant keepers place their food in amongst logs so that they have to search for it and inside huge balls that they have to push around to make the food come out.  The “visitors” on the other hand congregated where the fast food, ice cream and other sweets were being sold and sat down to eat.

My daughter and I saw animal mothers and fathers playing and nurturing their young.  The human parents seemed to be just sitting and talking to each other and the children tried to play, but since they, too, were quite overweight and one nine or ten year old girl was morbidly obese and couldn’t play at all.  We saw no counterpart of hers amongst the residence of the zoo.

Can’t we take care of ourselves as well as we take care of our animals.  If we take our dogs or cats to the vet, don’t they suggest that we put our pets on a diet (and we comply right away) if they are overweight?

Do we need “keepers” or “owners” to take care of us so that our lifespans are lengthened and so we eat well and exercise enough to be healthy and maintain ideals weights?  I guess so because  we certainly are not capable of doing it on our own.

Failing the Faithful

Anyone who reads my blog is either very faithful or has a lot of time on their hands, since I only post about once a week and I’ve been getting nominated for most boring blog on the Internet.

That is changing as I write because I now am going to focus all of my attention on my blog and my message board posts - informational and business - and it will now be worth it to you to stop in and read.

You may think that I finally figured out that spending the better part of a day creating a newsletter would be my motivation to “downsize” to a blog that I can update at will and that certainly played a part in my decision.

The greater motivation was a survival instinct and rather than paying, in my case, $446.30 next month to renew my contract with my newsletter delivery service, I would instead use my wonderful, free WordPress blog and the free Beachbody Message Boards to convey my thoughts and wisdom and what little knowledge I can still access in my old brain.

When it comes to survival of the fittest, part of criteria for survival is being smart and I just need to be smart.  So all of you faithful readers of my blog will now be seeing what all of my subscribers saw and hopefully they won’t abandon me and come here to read it when all they used to have to do was go to their email in box!

Lucky Us - An Open Letter to My Coaches

Does anyone count their blessings anymore? I sure do. But I also know that it is hard on a bad day, but even on the worst day, there are many things to be thankful for. One of the blessings that I don’t have is a coach to give me ideas. The reason that I haven’t sent out a newsletter in a few weeks is because I am not blessed like most if not all of the rest of you are to have a job other than being a Beachbody Coach. I went from having a business and being a coach to just being a coach and I have to hustle every day to succeed in this business.

I am constantly seeking out advice to be the best coach that I can be so that you can be the best coach that you can be. Your success has been entrusted to me and that is a huge responsibility. When Carl Daikeler had the audacious idea of entrusting the success of his company to the people who were benefitting from buying and using his products, it was an incredible leap of faith. His reputation and the reputation of the company has been placed in our hands because Beachbody is giving us their customers to guide, motivate and inspire.

Carl and Kevin and Pete, to name just a very few, inspire me and I need you to hear and feel my passion and enthusiasm. But I can’t just give you ideas and “rah rah” about this business. I also need some time to implement my ideas and the ideas that I have been able to glean from Kevin or Doug and test them and accept or reject them before I blindly pass them on to you. You certainly don’t need to waste your time on the trial and error that I have to use.

And so it is that I was lucky enough to get an idea from Brian, via Monica, about using MeetUps.com to schedule home presentations. He told me in an email that I read early last Sunday morning and within hours, I had signed up and scheduled a presentation which happened this past Sunday evening - http://weightloss.meetup.com/830/.

Now before you start thinking that I want you to spend $12.00 a month to join MeetUps.com, that is not the point. The point is that I have now experienced the power of home presentations and realize why all of the top coaches use them so successfully. Those top coaches grasped very early on how lucky they were to be a part of Beachbody and what the responsibilities and rewards are for being entrusted with helping other people. Carl and Kevin and the rest of the Beachbody management team are helping us to help other people to succeed. Once you fully grasp that, you can start looking people in the eye and telling them about what we do and telling them how you count being a Beachbody Coach as one of your many blessings.

The Fear of Fitness Persecution

An Open Letter from Rich to His Coaches.

As coaches, fitness persecution is a real fear that we all have and it certainly limits our desire to spread the religion of fitness. Although we are passionate when we are among those who share our beliefs and feel safe when we get together and talk about how much we love what we do and the benefits of what we do, there is always that underlying fear that if we tell someone else outside of our religion, we will be persecuted.

Is that fear unfounded? Absolutely not. Religious persecution gives us the historical precedent for that fear. Moses brought forth Judaism out of Egypt and the Ten Commandments forbade the worship of all but one god. The spread of the pantheistic Roman Empire to that area brought with it religious conflicts. Out of Judaism came Christianity, and its strict adherence to monotheism and emphasis on conversion lead to greater persecution. Anti-monotheistic persecution of Christians began with Nero and reached its apex with the Inquisition. While Christianity’s empire stretched across Europe and neighboring regions, south and east of their empire a new monotheistic religion arose, Islam, and it spread across Africa, the Middle East and northern India.

Out of religious intolerance and religious persecutions arose religious wars which have occurred in much of the rest of the world. In this country, we have the freedom to attend churches and temples and mosques without fear. But there now exists a reluctance to openly speak about our religions to other people for fear of offending their religion or out of fear that the person will think that we are trying to convert them to our religion.

And so it is with fitness and health. Unlike our religious beliefs which can be easily concealed unless we speak about them, fit and healthy people are obvious to everyone around them. We have the glow of health from eating right, the lean fit bodies and energy that we get from exercising and smiles on our faces, in our case, because we are making money from promoting our lifestyles. That is fine when we are in the safety of our own homes, but what about when we have to venture out. Personally, I suggest wearing baggy, heavy clothing so that our low body fat and lean bodies are concealed and we blend in better with the rest of the population. You can also feel sad for all of the overweight and out of shape people that you see and that will mask the revealing smile that might otherwise give us away.

Finally, I would continue to not speak openly about what we do so that people won’t think that we are trying to convert them. Our fear of persecution for promoting fitness and health is real and the repercussions are obvious. God forbid that we would meet someone, begin telling them about what we do and get into a conflict in the grocery store, for instance. I don’t know about you, but I for one don’t have the physical stature to get into a conflict with someone as they counter what I have to say and begin to advocate the benefits of being obese, not exercising and eating poorly. I am cringing at the thought of the consequences of losing that conversation. It is far better for us to limit what we have to say about the benefits of being fit and healthy to strictly the people who share our beliefs and won’t persecute us for our beliefs. It is a far safer existence.

Sincerely,

Rich Dafter
Team BeachBody Coach Howtobefit
howtobefit@aol.com

Ecoactivists Needed in Albuquerque, NM

My workouts revolve around P90X, but in the late afternoon on Sunday, I go for a good run. I paused at my turn around point because the view was so extraordinary with the Sandia Mountains standing majestically to the East. I was thinking of the words to say to express how important the mountain is to the city, its people and the beat of life here.

As my gaze lowered, I realized that a project that had been hidden from view for so long by a high fence was now visible from where I was standing. It was a corner property of perhaps 5 or more acres, now well graded and looking as if it was ready to be turned into a park.

Across the street, a couple were on their patio and I asked them if in fact the tract of land was to become a much needed park for that area of town. Their response stunned me as I was told that a greedy developer had purchased the parcel of land upon which suburban junk had been thrown for $300,000.00 (about what an acre would be in that area), had spent 18 months “cleaning” the property and was intending to build 10 homes.

They also disclosed that if you looked at the soil, the junk had actually been shredded and buried and that the homes would be built on the potentially toxic land.

Why doesn’t someone, like an ecoactivist, get some independent soil testing done, find out what the real soil quality is and sue the developer if there is a “cover up”. The money from the suit could then be used to have the soil thoroughly cleaned or correctly disposed of and the property turned into a park that people for generations to come would enjoy.

Passion of the Coach

Please don’t think that this is some cheap take off on the movie, the Passion of the Christ, one of the most powerful movies that I have ever seen. It is actually the only way that I could think of to describe to you why I have been so remiss in writing in my blog. I am very passionate about what I do and that passion is increasing by the day.

From the time that I realized that I could motivate my team of BeachBody coaches the way that I motivate and guide my Team BeachBody members, I have been sending out coaching newsletters almost daily. Given the finite amount of time and energy that we all have, that means that something had to suffer and that turned out to be this blog and I apologize for that.

Unless you become one of my coaches, I wouldn’t be able to share all of these newsletters with you, but I would like to share the contents of the latest one because it is representative of the passion that I put into my profession. It is entitled, “Sense of Duty“.

Has anyone noticed that I am intensely competitive? I want my team to win. Period. But I don’t want to win to get some trophy or a trip to Hawaii or personal accolades. I want my coaches and my players - members - to win because if we win, then you are being successful and our members are winning in achieving their fitness and weight loss goals.

Yesterday, after my P90X workout, I ran over to the local school’s track to socialize with some of the other runners who use the track after school is over and track practice has finished. When I got there, I saw one of the coaches of a local youth running club and we started talking about the upcoming season. I was heartbroken to find out that although last year they had 230 kids on the team, this year, it would be by invitation only and there were far, far fewer kids who could participate. The reason - the coach was working two jobs and his coaches were working more to make ends meet, or both spouses were working and they needed to spend more time with their families and so forth. Who suffers - all of those kids who want to be able to participate, become more fit, be better runners and be winners.

We are coaches and we are leaders and we have made a commitment to the success of our players. Yes, times are tough and we could quit for the same reason that the running club coach’s fellow coaches had quit. But let me give you a perfect example of why we shouldn’t.

I saw a woman in WOWY whose screen name is 135again and you need to know her story.

“I’m a survivor of a broken neck, massive heart attack with 3 heart stents and if that wasn’t enough I’ve also survived lung cancer by having 3/4 of my right lung removed. I have 2 teenagers who are both driving on learners permit. My husband of 23 years has stood by me through thin and thick. I need to lose the 105 pounds for my family, health and myself. My mother-in-law always tells me I looked just like Princess Diana when I got married to her son. I guess it would be nice to give that bride back to my husband and be able to enjoy things with my lovely daughter and handsome son again.”

Personally, I am sick and tired of hearing about how we can’t be successful in this business because that couldn’t be farther from the truth. I also don’t know what your measure of success is but if I could find a 135again or a 155again or you could find them and they could become princesses or princes again for themselves and their families, then that would be the greatest reward of all and a perfect example of why we are doing this. I pray to God, that 135again has a good coach to help her reach her goal.

Summon the sense of duty that exists within all of us and not only will you be a winner and successful because you have sought out and helped other human beings but you will also have the greatest sense of accomplishment there is.

Is It Still A Wonderful Life?

Before I start this blog, I have to say that the title for this theme came from Sojourner’s Magazine and I did not think up the title myself. Nor am I using that title for monetary gain. It is what I was thinking this week when the latter part of my week involved a lot of emails back and forth with the Online Executive Editor of Runner’s World Magazine. Here is something else I need to say right away, I love Runner’s World Magazine and this blog has nothing to do with my feelings about the magazine.
My feelings come specifically from the first and subsequent emails that I got from the Online Executive Editor. The first began, “You appear to be hosting copyrighted content from RunnersWorld.com without our permission, on these pages ______________. I looked at the articles and they were all years old, but I immediately complied. I did not like it and indicated my displeasure when I put on each page, “It’s a shame, but I have to remove this article”. My displeasure grew and the more I thought about it, it just didn’t make sense. Each article had a link to either sell Runner’s World Magazine or to the Runner’s World website and I was not benefiting in any way. I was just presenting information about running for people who wanted to read it and anybody who did read the article knew that it was coming from Runner’s World (and of course, the author who wrote it).

Now all of you hardliners are thinking, “But it is copyrighted and you shouldn’t be using it”. Well, I wasn’t using it, I was presenting it and making it available for people to read. I found out later that none of the articles appear on Runner’s World anymore and so (it is a mute point and no one else is complaining, namely the author) I couldn’t use the Editor’s suggestion to link to the article (his compromise). My compromise was to put this as the credit for each article (the author would change):

by Hal Higdon
Visit Runner’s World Online
We inspire and enable people to improve their lives and the world around them

Well, that didn’t fly either and it ended up that I was deemed, “patronizing, hostile, immature, or some combination thereof”. Those words are what made me think about writing a blog with a title from a Sojourner’s Magazine sitting on my desk - “Is It Still a Wonderful Life” - and use the caption underneath (and I will, God forbid, paraphrase it to say), “Building a [world] on the old values of generosity, compassion and community”. Now that all of the conservatives are leaving my blog because I have a liberal Christian magazine on my desk (notice I said on my desk and not that I was reading it), let it be known that I donate to one liberal Christian organization, one conservative Christian organization, have been baptized into three different religions and have a black wrist band that says, “I did not vote for Bush”, so that I have all of my bases covered just in case.

In my mind, and I will always think the same way, it doesn’t matter if you are liberal or conservative, what race or religion or nationality you are, the fundamental values of generosity, compassion and community should apply. And whether I am talking about some old running articles or our interactions with other human beings, why don’t we all try to live like they did in the movie (an absolute must see), It’s A Wonderful Life” and all be generous, compassionate and live in a community that exalts those values…

Hope for the Physically Insane

At other times in my life, the reason that I haven’t blogged since Wednesday would be attributed to poor health. It is not the case this time. In fact, I have been quite busy and have accomplished a lot in terms of my mission to spread the gospel of fitness. I revamped my Do It With Me website to better portray my team members and to convey how each one of us is working to help you achieve your health and fitness goals. I expanded my newsletter by adding more features and that will be coming out on schedule. In fact because of my lifestyle choices now, I seem to have dodged the flu bullet (which this year, unfortunately, seems to be the size of the rocket that blew up the spy satellite).

I also, this week, finally came to the conclusion that I have been physically insane.

What? Don’t you mean mentally insane? No, over the last 20 years, I am ready to admit that I was physically insane - you know, repeating the same workouts over and over and expecting a different result. Yes, I had a bad car accident, went to a bunch of doctors who wouldn’t think outside the box, took tons of antibiotics, had surgery and yet didn’t feel better. Thoughts that maybe everything that I was feeling crept into my head and the whole time, I was going out the door and running mile after mile, doing workout after workout and thinking that was what would make my body right again.

Wrong! What I needed to come to grips with was that my physical landscape had changed because of the medical treatment that I had received and that the body that I had once depended on and taken for granted had been “altered” (read the part about the Caldwell Luc procedure in My Story) and now I needed a new road map for success in life.

Why did it take over 20 years to realize that? I guess that lots of us get comfortable with the status quo and thinking that if it worked before it will work again. Let’s face it, I am a runner so what else should I have to do except run? Running isn’t rocket science. It is whoever has the most heart and training the hardest doing the best. And that works for most people.

But what if your physical landscape changed because of an injury or illness or setbacks in your life for whatever reason. If you are starting from scratch at 20 after being an athlete in high school, maybe you can do what worked before and get the same results. If you are in your 30’s and 40’s and beyond, though, and you haven’t worked out in a while - maybe you got injured, couldn’t work out for awhile and then you got busy with work and family and started putting on some weight or you just lost interest and let your body go - putting one foot in front of the other (or whatever your sport or activity involved) may be a whole lot harder than it used to be.

What’s my advice? Don’t set yourself up for failure by trying to do what you used to be able to do without getting back the strength, cardiovascular capacity and flexibility that once propelled your body to success. Start by getting your weight under control with a weight loss program. Build up your strength with a strength training program and then with your once again sleek strong body, get your heart and lungs in shape to be the engines that drive your body with an aerobic workout program.

Running was my horse pulling my cart. Now strength training and flexibility are my horse and they are pulling my running along. Without them, my running won’t “move” as it hasn’t done for many, many years. In my 20’s and 30’s I was very strong and very flexible because I did manual labor (working on a farm) that required a lot of walking, lifting and being very physically active. Now I sit at a desk and rely on P90X to give me back the body that I used to have as a result of just working. It is my “work” that will give me that incredible “horse” that I once had and that will pull my “cart” as it once did!