Take Shape For Life Review
Company: Take Shape For Life (TSFL)
Website: www.tsfl.com
Type: MLM
Products: Focus around Weight loss
Rating: 3/10
Is Take Shape For Life a scam?
There are a multitude of MLM companies online where each one has its own range of product while you get some companies that are just copy cats when it comes to the products and compensation plan. Whether you are looking to buy products from this company or whether you are interested in their compensation plan, you need to read this review.
Most people call MLM companies a scam, but for this review I am not going to say that Take Shape For Life is one, but it simply does not mean that it is a good company or one that will make you money. So are so many things to consider when approaching an MLM company and we must not take it likely.
So sit back and enjoy yourself while I unfold this company for you into bite size pieces:
Take Shape For Life Products
The products will be the driving force of an MLM company and without them they can be classified as a pyramid scheme. The products needs to be real (which is obvious), of good quality and unique. I really like to focus on the uniqueness of the company because MLM companies are everywhere and if a company cannot stand out of the crowd then it can just as well close its doors.
Below is a list of some of the products that you can find:
- Shakes
- Nutrition bars
- Soups
- Smoothies
- Snacks
- Supplements
- Melatonin
- Books
- Accessories etc.
As you can see, there is not really something special about the products here. There are so many other MLM companies that are selling the same type of products and nothing is stopping me from buying it from my local store. So there is not much to say about the products and it was not unique at all.
Let’s see what the compensation plan has to offer:
Take Shape For Life Compensation plan
The compensation plan is the 2nd most important pillar in an MLM company and it needs to be takes seriously. The most important aspect that I look at is the simplicity of the plan. The more level, requirement and terms a plan has the more complex it becomes. There are 2 ways to make money with this company:
1. Direct sales
First of all you need to qualify for a health coach in order to earn a commission. To become a health coach, you need to pay $199 for the health coach business pack in order to qualify. Once you are qualified and you are able to get the products sold, you will earn a commission rate of 15% from the price of each product.
Your client support bonuses will also increase as your sales volume increases.
2. Team building
Here you will rely on other people to scale your online business for you. Once you become a business coach and have your team of Health coaches ready, you can start to earn commissions from your team.
In the first category you will find that there are 7 levels:
- Health coach
- Business coach
- Senior coach
- Manager
- Associate Director
- Director
- Executive Director
As you grow through these levels, you will be able to earn money from each generation that is under you. Then you get the leadership development plan which has 9 more levels:
- Integrated Executive Director
- Regional Director
- Integrated Regional Director
- National Director
- Integrated National Director
- Global Director
- Integrated Global Director
- Presidential Director
- Integrated Presidential Director
In total it is about 16 levels that you can achieve which is way to many if you ask me. This makes it very hard to understand all of the levels and it is a lot of information to digest. The compensation plan also contributed to the low score that I gave this company.
The compensation plan needs to be simple enough for you and your health coaches to understand. When you first introduce this plan to another person, they need to be able to understand it fully before they will ever join. It is not easy to convert someone in the world today about getting involved in MLM and the easier you can make this for them, the better.
Should you join Take Shape For Life?
There was not one thing that I really like and to give my honest opinion I do not think that this company is a good one to invest your time and money into. The products are not unique and the compensation plan is way too complicated for anyone to understand. Maybe if you are an experienced network marketer and you have the gift of explaining complicated compensation plan to others, then you can take a chance.
Below are 2 screenshots of the statistics from medifastmedia.com where they show you the income from each level and also the percentage of people that are in each level:
As you can see the majority of people are only earning around $87.45 per month
As you can see that the majority are not making that much money after all. Only the top 1% is making the real money.
Affiliate marketing vs MLM Marketing
I have been doing Affiliate marketing for more than a year now and while I had my ups and down, I learned and achieved a lot during this year. Affiliate marketing is where you promote the products from other companies in order to earn a commission from them.
There are several ways to promote these products and get visitors to your offer and that is through building websites (which is my favourite), social media, PPC and Media Buys. By building a website you will create the potential to earn a passive income from it. Websites have that thing about them especially if you can rank your articles on the first page of Google.
The best strategy to use is to build a website around a niche and then to drive traffic to your website via articles. This very article you are reading is an example of the type of articles you will be writing. Once the articles are written, then you just have to wait until it ranks in Google.
There are no limits to the size of a website or the amount of websites that you can build. You can make them as big as you want or you can build as many as you want. The beautiful thing is that your websites will do all of the work and selling for you on autopilot. Once they are finished you only need to do some maintenance on them which is not more than 1 hour per month.
>Click here to start your very own passive income earning business<
Featured Articles
I think that MLM business like the take shape for life is hard to begin with. You really have to spend time learning the skills to convince people to buy your product. Although they provide some training, it is still based into your own capability if you will be successful in this type of business. By the way, i have read that you compared MLM from affiliate marketing. Is affiliate marketing really better?
Hi John
Affiliate marketing is very much better. First of all you have more niches to explore which is not that saturated. Secondly, you can scale your business faster and bigger because it is all dependant on you.
There are thousands of niches and millions of products to sell and the online world allows you to do this with a website which will in return earn you a passive income.
Affiliate marketing wins hands down 🙂
Hi Valie
I’ve looked at several MLM companies in my time and they do all seem to be copies of the main players.
As you pointed out in your review, although they all sound very good on the surface when you dig deeper into them and see how the compensation plan is set out you soon realize that the only ones who actually make any money from these sorts of programs are the ones at the top of the triangle.
I also noticed especially with the companies in the health niche that all their products are basically the same and can be easily purchased from high street stores or even Amazon and quite often a lot cheaper.
I’ll stick with affiliate marketing thanks!
Alan 🙂
Hi Alan
Your comment is spot on. I got information from several mlm companies where they say that more than 60% of the earners are making less than $500 per month while the top 0.5% are making more than $6000 per month.
Most of these companies are not unique because they are copy cats of other companies. Once the company has reached their threshold, then another one will appear to fill the gaps.
Hi Viljoen, thanks for the great investigation – Shape For Life certainly doesn’t look like it’s worth joining, selling expensive diet milkshake sounds like a hard job for one thing… Joining fee is expensive, and you don’t make even $100 a month. MLM seems scary!
Another thing is this team building & level hierarchy that puts me off…although for some it may be motivating, for me it would feel like I’m pushed and forced to go forward.
Thanks for the great article.
Ray
Hi Ray
If the products that you can get from your local store are less expensive that that of an mlm company, then it is a red flag. If the product was unique in some sense, then it might have worked.
All these levels that you need to read is also a major put off for me because you are reliant on your downline to grow your business and each level has its own requirement such as group volume and your direct referrals also need to reach a specific level before you can finally grow.
TSFL has been a great part time job for me. I started about 2 1/2 years ago and I have had the satisfaction of assisting my clients to health and weight loss. My husband and I have each lost weight too so that’s an added benefit for sure. Becoming a health coach is so much more than selling the products. The food (fuelings) are one of the many tools my clients use to gain heath. The income has been good too.
This is one program I haven’t heard of. I agree though that has all the elements of a scam and that only the top 1% is making significant money. It looks like something that you could put a full 8 hours a day into and still not achieve the top level. I don’t like that using their system you have to rely on others to scale your website.
One thing I would have liked in this review is a brief intro of exactly what Take Shape for Life is. What are they offering, what are they claiming? Also, the first time you use MLM maybe define what it is? I’m unfamiliar with the term and didn’t know what it was till I looked into it afterwards.
That said, you do have a lot of great content here! Thank you for your review!
Hi JCamden
Thanks for the comment. I think I am going to write a review on MLM soon that will explain all the ins and outs of the compensation plans and what everything means. In most of my articles I do define what mlm means, but I guess I forgot about this one.
Thanks for the reminder
Your review of Take Shape For Life is so far off the mark that it is obvious that you rally only read a few articles and then took your own personal standards to splash the page with a ‘bait and switch’ alternative to another plan that is most likely an affiliate link where you are either selling a product, or earn a commission?
Take Shape For Life is changing lives…. but only if you do not try to sell the product. The way a person becomes Successful Health Coach is if they truly try to help others figure out what is called “The Habits of Health.” In essence TSFL is changing lives one person at a time, as it did mine. I was able to lose 115 pounds and have been able to maintain a healthy weight for over 6 years. Not because I BUY STUFF… but because I live the Habits of Health. It is the lifestyle change that so many people are looking to find.
It saddens me to read your unqualified review because I am a living example of helping others figure out what it means to be healthy. I currently am helping others not only lose weight…. but get off their medications… live a more fulfilling life…. and yes… I help others become capable to keep the lost weight off for life.
I work as a full time employee at a major retailer and for the last two years through helping others simply get healthy…. I have been able to earn a substantial income. More than my fulltime retail employer pays me for schelping their products for over 13 years running! The hourly employees are the ones that are being scammed because someone in corporate America tells them what to do, when to do it, and how much they get paid to do it…. with no chance of any substantial income increase. TSFL allows a person to create an organization of like minded people that simply want to embrace true health. True health requires financial freedom.
True health requires a person to be in control of not only their health…. but their time…. to be able to control ALL aspects of their life, including their finances. Sadly enough… AMERICA has very little opportunity to grow when punching a time clock and TSFL fills the hole neatly by providing a clear path for an individual that simply applies themselves and keeps going.
If a Health Coach stops trying to be a sales person… and TRULY pulls alongside a struggling person…. then they both ride to a place of better overall health…..
Your review of TSFL is a disgrace and actually hampers those searching for true health to be able to find a path that works. You, the author of the original post…. clearly does not know ANYTHING relevant about Take Shape For Life.
In your first paragraph, you state that I use the bait and switch method in order to send people to affiliate links earning commissions all the way. This is not entirely true as I only earn commissions on one program. There are more than 3 other programs that I recommend and do not make a cent off.
It is also strange that most people bashing on my blog are also affiliated with the program that I am writing a review on as I can see, you are an affiliate of this program where you also earn a commission selling their products and building your downline.
I have been involved with multiple MLM’s before so please do not say that my review is a disgrace and that I do not know anything about MLM’s.
You will also see that less than 1% of the people involved with this program are making the majority of the money, so I find it hard to believe that this company is associated with wealth if more than 75% of the participants are making less than $320 per month. For this, I have statistics at my side.
And please do not associate Take Shape For Health with true health as there will never be a supplement, shake or snack that will make or keep you healthy. Just by taking extra things into your body will not necessarily make you healthy because it is things that are inside of our bodies that are making us ill which do not belong there. Supplements are only supplements and it will never keep you healthy.
Most of the processed foods and supplements that are man made will not make you healthy as it was designed for the sole purpose of making money just as Take Shape For Life.