7-minute-workout-logoFor most people a workout is a trip to the gym, playing your favourite sport or just doing a series of excercises around the house.

Costly, time consuming and because of this, for most people unachievable.

Seeking to bring you a workout they claim only takes 7 minutes and needs to be done 3 times a week comes the 7 Minute Workout. Read on for a full review.

The Company

Launched in mid 2011, 7 Minute Workout was co-founded by Joel Therien (photo right) and Chris Reid with Therien serving as CEO.

Joel Therein, described as ‘a world class natural body builder‘ on the 7 Minute Workout website, also owns Global Virtual Opportunities (GVO). GVO have been around for a while and I’ve previously reviewed their ‘Host Then Profits’ MLM, which I found to be little more than a recruitment driven opportunity.

Like Host Then Profit, 7 Minute Workout appears to be another opportunity launched under the GVO banner by Therien.

The 7 Minute Workout Product Line

The 7 Minute Workout carry a range of fitness programs targeting ‘beginners who have never exercised in their lives but we also have programs for competitive elite level athletes‘.

7 Minute Workout claims that each of these programs takes no more than ‘7 minutes, 3 times per week‘ to do. Of course what’s in these plans isn’t revealed, as then they’d have no reason to charge you a monthly subscription for it.

The 7 Minute Workout Compensation Plan

Update 29th September 2013 – Around mid 2013 7 Minute Workout dumped the plan reviewed below and adopted a pass-up compensation plan.

BehindMLM’s review of 7 Minute Workout’s v2.0 compensation plan is available here. /end update

 

Note that the 7 Minute Workout compensation plan refers to retail customers as ‘students’. Where the term students appears in the following compensation plan analysis, we’re actually talking about retail customers.

The 7 Minute Workout compensation plan requires all distributors to recruit at least one new student (or distributor) per month to be eligible for commissions. Any additional students or distributors recruited carry over commission eligibility for the following months.

If you enrol 4 students in one month, you will be qualified for 4 months.

Commissions wise, the 7 Minute Workout compensation plan can be broken down into two components, Fast Start Bonuses and Binary Commissions.

Fast Start Bonus

The 7 Minute Workout Fast Start Bonus works on a unilevel structure. This means that each new distributor you recruit or student you enrol creates a new leg underneath you. These students and distributors form your first level and each leg is an independent downline tree of yours.

Students are unable to recruit new members but any new students or distributors your downline (distributors you’ve recruited) recruits remain in their respective leg of your unilevel organisation. These students and distributors form levels two and onwards of your unilevel organisation.

7 Minute Workout’s Fast Start Bonus is paid out according to your membership rank within the company. There are five membership ranks within the 7 Minute Workout and, along with their Fast Start Bonus payouts, they are as follows;

  • Fitness Student – Pay your membership fee of $9.97 a month. Fitness Student pays out $20 per new distributor or student recruited.
  • Fitness Counselor –  Recruit 5 new distributors or students. Fitness Counselor pays out $25 per new student or distributor you recruit and $5 on any students or distributors recruited by your downline.
  • Fitness Director – Recruit 10 new distributors or students and have at least 3 Fitness Counselors in 3 separate legs of your unilevel organisation. Fitness Director pays out $30 per new student or distributor you recruit and $10 on any students or distributors recruited by your downline.
  • Fitness Executive Director – Recruit 20 new distributors or students and have at least 3 Fitness Directors in 3 separate legs of your unilevel organisation. Fitness Executive pays out $35 per new student or distributor you recruit and $15 on any new students or distributors recruited by your downline.
  • Fitness Ambassador – Recruit 30 new distributors or students and have at least 3 Fitness Executive Directors in 3 separate legs of your unilevel organisation. Fitness Ambassador pays out $40 per new student or distributor you recruit and $20 on any new students or distributors recruited by your downline.

Binary Commissions

The second component of the 7 Minute Workout Compensation plan revolves around binary commissions using a 1/3 and 2/3 paired model.

A binary structure works differently to a unilevel in that, with you starting at the top, two legs branch out from under you and once filled, two new legs branch out from those legs and so on and so forth.

As you begin to fill your 7 Minute Workout binary, it’ll  begin to look something like this;

As I mentioned earlier, 7 Minute Workout use a 1/3 and 2/3 pairing model with the minimum requirement being 6 distributors or students split 2 and 3 on each side.

It doesn’t matter which side the 2 and 3 fall on, just so long as they can be paired within the 1/3 and 2/3 and  structure. The system will automatically pair both sides so that the maximum number of pairs can be made.

To give you an example of how the 7 Minute Workout binary pairing system works, let’s say you have 60 people in your downline (a mixture of students and distributors) split 35 / 25. Due to the mechanics of a binary structure, this isn’t going to happen naturally so it means some people must have quit the business over time.

35 members are on your left and 25 are on your right and when paired up in groups of six, we wind up with 8 possible cycles (35/4 = 8.75 rounded down on your left paired with 16 out of the 25 members on your right to form 8 pairs).

7 Minute Workout pay out $20 per calculated pair so in this instance you’d walk away with a $160 commission.

Joining the 7 Minute Workout

Those wishing to join the 7 Minute Workout must pay a one time distributor fee of $149.97 and then $9.97 a month thereafter.

Conclusion

With a solid retail offering and clear distinction between retail sales and company distributorship, the 7 Minute Workout compensation plan offers members the choice to grow their retail business whilst attracting distributors to the company along the way.

The compensation neither favours retail sales or distributorships (nor withholds commissions in preference of either), which is great to see in a MLM compensation plan.

As far as I can see, the weakest link of the 7 Minute Workout isn’t the opportunity itself, but rather the product it’s attached to.

Being fitness programs, once you’ve seen it – that’s it. You can save it on your computer (video) or print it out (text) and you’re done.

It is appreciated that 7 Minute Workout offer a range of courses but unless they’re restricting access to them monthly or something, once you’ve saved them all – what’s keeping you paying that monthly membership fee?

Given that 7 Minute Workout claim that Therien ‘has followed this system since he was a teenager‘, and the fact that he’s now 39 and still following the same system – that pretty much rules out monthly updates to the system too.

All in all, beyond being a distributor and earning a commission via your membership, I can’t really see what the incentive here is for retail customers to keep on paying $9.97 a month.

Unless I’m missing something here, retaining customers sounds like it’s going to be extremely difficult with this program which in turn will leave you scrambling to replace the customers leaving the company after they’ve accessed and saved the various programs on offer.

Probably not the best method for building a solid residual income and use of your marketing efforts…