Something you May not Know About Me...

I feel like I am ready to finally share something with you all and it's coming back around because a year ago I was in Nashville celebrating with this company I used to be partnered with at their annual gathering. I’ve also recently had people asking me about why I'm not with the company anymore, as well as run into a few people who thought I was still with the company. So, let me clear a few things up and talk about my overall experience.

If you didn't know, in 2016 I was a Beachbody Coach for 9 months. I don't care what you do or do not know about the company, but I don't want to say anything negative and that is not my intention here and I want to make that clear first and foremost. I’m also not going to go into detail about what a coach is here, so if you don’t already know that info, go find it somewhere else first, and come back. I can't help but be nervous going into write about this, because last time I pushed that nervousness aside and just went for my thoughts and feelings, I had a huge backlash from the people who I wanted to understand me the most. One must realize, in life you'll never be able to please them all.

Why did I become a coach?

I became a Beachbody Coach because I saw tremendous opportunity with community in the center, and everything that is preached, what the company is truly about, their mission statement, all of that, aligns perfectly with my vision of personal success. I was lucky enough to get an opportunity to be surrounded by a bunch of people ranking approximately in the top 1% of the company and they went about their marketing strategy encouraging me not to talk about Beachbody and to build my own brand, which of course I was totally, and still totally am, all about!

The Experience

Usually when people ask me, how was it being a Beachbody Coach, all I can say is it was an experience. Yes, I do say that about a lot of things in life, but it’s still true here. I would say I fully enjoyed myself right up until the moment I decided that I didn't want to do it anymore, which is a classic pattern for my life. Call me the Pisces that I am, (if you don’t get it, just ignore it), but I make decisions quickly and switch gears fast and it has never steered me wrong in life thus far. I would not say that it even steered me wrong here, because I learned a lot about building a brand and a community, which are still deep priorities for my life.

Reflection

So, what exactly was it that made me decide to quit? It really was a combination of things.


True Time Freedom

In the very end I realized that my passions and ultimate desires in life are to be able to travel more. Beachbody offers amazing “all expenses paid” travel trips (that you earn, of course) but I didn't want to travel on behalf of this company, I want to do my own traveling, and it seemed very clear that I was not going to be able to just embark out into the world and make the kinds of things I want to happen, happen, while working with this company; at the very least not within three years before I had successfully built up my business and even then I still saw leaders above me who looked like they either struggled to truly take time off or plain didn’t want to because they were so immersed in their team and the company.

True Time Freedom to me is what I am working for in life. I want to be able to step away to spend quality time in life with my partner, my friends, my family, and also myself! To truly unplug. To be able to have a business running smoothly and efficiently that I can step away from to do these things and come back to have it still working well on it’s own. This includes building a community of people who understand that I am going to take this time away from work, away from electronics, and that I encourage them to do the same. I didn’t see this with Beachbody. People thought it was rad that was my goal and they may have even agreed or said they want to build their team with the same culture, but I was still being encouraged to post every single day, 3-5 times per day, and I never learned scheduling systems until I stepped away from the company and branched out on my own.


Shakes are NOT a Meal Replacement

I always had the mentality going into Beachbody that I wasn't going to make this Shakeology of theirs a meal replacement. It is advertised as that, but I am not for those kinds of things (neither was the team I joined) and so I was dead set on teaching people how to eat well and incorporate this extra nutritious beverage into their day. Despite that goal, I still found myself using it as a meal replacement, simply because it's an easy go-to. I also witnessed other people doing the same thing. Even if you don’t do it often, or even regularly, it is still not healthy. Plus, I have to turn back to my classic: If you think you’re fine and you haven’t truly taken the time to track yourself/check yourself, then you are probably doing it more than you think you are. It needs to be an occasional thing, for example during travel. Otherwise, YOU NEED TO EAT REAL DELICIOUS AND NUTRITION FOODS, preferably one full meal at time.


Your Brand Becomes You

In building a brand, you have to totally embody that image if you want to be successful. That means you can use your own name, your own colors, your own style, etc. etc. but at the end of the day if you're building a brand through Beachbody, you are Beachbody. Additionally, it didn't feel natural or right to me to talk to so many people constantly, in person and online, about this opportunity. I feel like I'm already an outgoing and bubbly person and if things come through then that's great, but I don't want to start conversations with an end goal in mind. They encouraged me not to do this and I strived for it. I was told to just have conversations and when the time is right, like when my profession is asked or health is brought up, then talk about Beachbody and invite them to check it out. Still, being the reason in the first place that I’d talk to somebody at all is that I'm hoping for the opportunity to say something, it just didn't feel natural. There was a time in there I had myself convinced that it was totally fine, and I do believe I was being genuine, but it’s really hard at the end of the day to separate the numbers you are being encouraged to go for (get three to five new people per month) and the real, nonchalant conversations you are striving to have. I honestly felt like I could/should be doing other things with my time, yet this is how you promoted and got anywhere with your business.

I also realized pretty quickly that I missed leading my own workout classes and that I wanted to create and promote my own fitness programs. Yes, I got into the best shape of my life, I felt so motivated and so supported, but still following those at home workout programs I wanted to be those trainers. Sure, the cool thing about Beachbody is that you actually can become those trainers, but I didn't want to have to jump through the hoops or climb the ladder to get there.  I fully understand that you have to jump through hoops and climb a ladder to get anywhere in life, but I want to do it on my own terms, under my own name, under my own original unique content.


The Money didn't Add Up

I was totally blinded by the potential within this business, I can hands-down admit that. I got completely obsessed and sucked in, I wanted to be a top-10 coach, I wanted to go for it, and it definitely consumed my life and even harmed my intimate partnership a bit. Anyone reading this might say, well that’s where she went wrong, though, I disagree. I am passionate in life and this is how I pursue things. My breaking point was when a good friend of mine finally sat me down and drilled me about what I was doing. I feel as though I had been waiting for somebody to do this to me for the entire nine months that I was a coach, gratefully I had immense support from friends and family, then this friend came along. They basically broke it down to me that it's not an organic business structure and they thought that I would be much more successful on my own. That’s putting it nicely. This gave me the courage to finally have the conversation with my (ND) doctor (who I idolize as a type of life coach for me and have worked with for many years) about what I had been doing for the past 9 months, because I had mentioned to him that I was involved, but I blatantly did not ask his opinion and now, I think I know why. He reminded me that income potential is not real income and he gave me some tips on how to look at the average income across the company (because those stats are publicly posted). I remember specifically we also talked about the type of cuts you make with a company like this and he said he would hate to see me become very successful and be making $50,000 a year where in reality I could be making $150k.


The Common Denominator

There is one common denominator that I see between all the successful coaches that I was surrounded by and even from other top success stories. I'm not saying it's this way for everyone, but I am saying that this is what I see from where I am at in my life. I see people who have come from hitting an all-time low in their life (for whatever reason) where they either didn't have a support group in friends and family, or they didn't enjoy the friends they had because they were into things they weren't into anymore or their friends discouraged them from becoming a better person. Then, Beachbody came into their life and they saw this opportunity to be a better person, to become healthy and fit, to put themselves first, to build a community and be a part of a community of like-minded people building each other up towards the same awesome goal, and the biggest bonus is that you could make money and become a successful, bread winning,  entrepreneur through it all!! What’s not to love?! Essentially these people came from nothing and they created a new life around themselves that they had been dreaming about. Which is totally freaking awesome! However, I am a super outgoing and bubbly person who knows a lot of people and I often reflect, and know, that it is rare to have such a large and tight knit friend group that I have. Though everyone supported me, nobody wanted to get involved. Most people were very polite about it but there were a select few that blatantly said, “No, I'm not getting involved in that!” Which we laughed about and moved on because that's the type of relationship I have with people, real and blunt. My favorite kind. I definitely was not discouraged by this! I fully believe in leading by example, I fully believed that this could be the solution for everyone! I wanted all my friends to get involved, I dreamed of creating this huge web where we were all successful entrepreneurs, and I dreamed of going on all these trips together and celebrating each other's success. I still dream of those things, but now it's in a different way.


There's a Comeback for Everything!

As I sit here writing this I find myself wanting to say, “Yeah, but…” Look, I know that there is going to be an opposing view for every little thing that I say. I remember vividly when I first decided I was going to quit, I journaled about it and when I decided to share it openly, my mentor told me that they disagreed with just about everything I had to say (but they weren’t going to waste their time and energy on me any longer).

In the end I know that I deeply hurt my mentor, again the two sided coin, but I will also say that I feel as though I tried really hard not to burn the bridge. I gave us both some time, I sent a card, I reached out via email, and at this point it is blatantly obvious to me that they want nothing to do with me. It makes sense, because that is the mentality of the business: you've got to keep going on your train and when other passengers decide to get off, well, they’re left behind. Which is probably just another reason why I had to get off myself.

Do I still fully believe in the programs and the products?

The fitness portion of this company is amazing and I love it. I have nothing negative to say about that. On the other hand, a big part of the company is drinking their nutrient dense smoothie, Shakeology. I have always been for 100% natural, real, from the earth FOOD and that is why I was able to sign on with Beachbody in the first place. HOWEVER, I never drank regular Shakeology, I always drank their vegan options. The vegan option still really isn’t that awful in my opinion, but I don’t think that’s what most people drink. When you hear people giving Shakeology a bad rap they’re usually looking at the non-vegan. Since I have quit working with Beachbody I have learned a little more about reading labels, which is ironic because I definitely thought I knew how to read labels before. If you don’t know, any supplement company in the US is allowed to make, manufacture, and market their product however they want and it does NOT have to be approved by the FDA. This alone turns people off of Beachbody products, but I understand that the FDA has it’s own pitfalls and that alone did not turn me off of the products, obviously. The following blew me away, shared via one of my instructors at the school I am currently attending for nutrition, NTA:

Here is an awesome take on Shakeology, written by our former Olympia student Chloe Parsons:

Only 51% of this product is actually "food." As someone studying nutrition and building a business to nourish people, let me break down this label for you: A serving of Shakeology is 48g, but for the sake of the math let's keep everything in mg, so one serving is 48,000mg. Based on the label, 15,000mg is a whey protein isolate--31% of the total product.

This whey protein is not only from conventionally raised animals but is high heat treated and therefore the protein is denatured. No living bio available protein here. The "proprietary fruit blend" which is a major selling point comprises 2,075mg or only 4% of the product. That's an incredibly small trace amount of foods that in their whole forms are wonderfully healthy, but here they're nutritionally useless. The next section with things like sprouted quinoa, chia, and more buzz words but in their dead form equal 6,585mg or 14% of the product. Lastly, the label includes the "enzyme blend" of 830mg.

Now add up ALL the ingredients here and you get *drumroll* 24,490mg or 51% of the total product. But wait?! Where is the other 23,510mg?! At the veeeeery bottom of the label a supplement will sneak in the list the non-nutritional ingredients under "other ingredients" and they aren't required to tell you how much of each ingredient is in it. In this case, 49% of the total product is FRUCTOSE, cocoa powder, flavorings, and preservatives.

​Go through your other supplements and give them this treatment. Unless you do the math yourself, they won't tell you. Start with the black bar after the list of % daily values to start adding up ingredients. Total it up and compare it to the serving size. The difference between the ingredients listed and the serving size is the amount of "other ingredients" in the product. 

After reading that, I immediately had to go look at the Shakeology labels around my home, because I was feeling conflicted on whether or not to consume the rest of it, I still had product sitting around! The regular Shakeo was spot on with this review, the vegan Shakeo however, like previously stated, was not. There are extra supplements from the Performance Line that, as a coach, I was encouraged to sell (another revenue stream). I had looked carefully at each of these ingredients when I was a coach and decided that I could only get behind one of them, due to it being totally natural without additives, that was the HYDRATE supplement formulated to hydrate you better during intense workouts. When I looked at this now after reading the above, the “other ingredients” listed at the bottom was Dextrose. Immediately, I was though uugggh, really??

Dextrose is a chemical form of sugar. If you Google it, it’s going to come up saying it’s only a simple sugar in chemical form! That “chemical form” is where I have the disagreement. Not only is sugar in and of itself HIGHLY addictive, all these chemical alterations that our food giants put in our food these days DO NOT react in our body the same way the natural substance would. Also, here’s an entire article about Fructose Foolishness if you are interested, because if you Google that one it’s going to come up telling you that it’s a simple sugar from fruit and totally harmless!


In the End ​

I'm surprised by how challenging I'm finding it to wrap up my overall experience. Although that's the entire point of me even writing this article, because people keep asking me and I don't really know what to say. I can't just say it in a couple sentences, that's why I usually revert back to saying it was an experience. I highly enjoyed myself! I learned so much about myself and about building my business. The saddest part to me is that I could only have one or the other, being in or being out, there is no option for a little bit of both. I would absolutely love to stay in touch with the people that I met, because I met some really awesome, badass individuals who are super cool and down to earth, that I respect, but the truth is they want nothing to do with me, and honestly, I totally get it. From their perspective I understand and I wish them well.


Moving Onward

My goal is still to create a wildly excited and thriving community around health and happiness. I really want to create a space, just like the one I learned through Beachbody, but this one won't have any “behind the scenes” opportunities. I dream of holding a space for people that just want to live a healthy life to be encouraged to show up and share their journey. People from all over the world, because I hear all the time that people don't feel like they have that community and they don't feel like they have the support in their life. I want to create a community where people can feel like they can join and be a part of something bigger than themselves that doesn't involve investing money or creating a business. If that's what you're interested in then go and be a part of Beachbody. Clearly it works for people! I feel like I've given a lot of detail as to what the business entails in this post and if it feels like it resonates with you, then go out and do it! You never know until you try. If you feel like it's not for you and you're like, “Yeah, I want to join a community with no strings attached as well!” Then you are invited with open arms to come over and join our Self Care Support Group.

I do have to thank you for taking the time to read this! I know it's incredibly long, but I don't know how else I could have shortened it without saying everything that I wanted to say. Story of My Life. Of course if you have any questions or concerns I am more than happy to answer them. If you happen to be somebody reading this that is totally put off and completely disagrees with everything I've had to say, then go ahead and keep that to yourself, because again, that is not my intention.

​Sending love and light out to you all.