american-dream-nutrition-logoAccording to Wikipedia,

The American Dream is a national ethos of the United States in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work.

Throw in some “Christian principles and values”, weight-loss, heart pills and juice… and you’ve pretty much got the gist of new home-based business upstart American Dream Nutrition.

Read on for a full review of the American Dream Nutrition MLM opportunity.

The Company

The American Dream Nutrition website contains no information about who is running or owns the company.

American Dream Nutrition is a company founded on Christian principles and values.

We are committed to stand alone as far as the quality of our products, the exciting new income potential our compensation plan offers, and we especially pride ourselves on our “we care about you” customer service policy.

That’s about as in-depth as it gets… with the rest of the company information page following a similarly vague tone.

Further research however has revealed that a ‘Greg Gunderson’ (photo right) has been named as the CEO of the company. Why this isn’t just mentioned on the American Dream Nutrition website however, I don’t know.

The domain ‘americandream4me.com’ was registered on the 26th February 2011, however the registration information is set to private.

Greg Gunderson appears to have been in network marketing for a while now and has at one time or another been the CEO of New Century Life and TriUnity International.

Interestingly enough, on the company page for TriUnity, American Dream is mentioned:

In 1993, Mr. Gunderson entered into the Network Marketing Industry. He worked his way to success in three companies with which he worked.

Mr. Gunderson, also, developed several copyrighted and nationally acclaimed Direct Marketing Systems for his “downline” members. Ultimately, after about 4 years as a Successful Distributor, Mr. Gunderson launched his own MLM company, American Dream Nutrition.

Mr. Gunderson, using a Direct Mail Marketing System that he created, recruited THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of Autoship Distributors within 1 year for his company American Dream.

His company, American Dream, is still in existence today and has been a long-running successful MLM company with distributors across America and Canada.

I’m not sure why the American Dream Nutrition website mentions that they are in pre-launch in March 2012, but it appears that American Dream has been around since the late 1990s. Perhaps American Dream “Nutrition” is being run as a separate company.

The American Dream Nutrition Product Line

American Dream Nutrition has three flagship products that members can sell and earn commissions on:

  • ThinMagic Ultra – a ‘weight management super pill’ made from Glucomannan fibre, Caralluma, Cha de Bugre and Fucoxanthin ($49 a month)
  • Get Juiced – a juice made from ‘107 organic & natural ingredients, nutrients and super whole foods’ ($59 a month)
  • Clear Heart – ‘an all new one-of-a-kind formulation with L Arginine, EDTA, Nattokinase, Co-Enzyme Q-10 plus many other proven ingredients designed to help clear years of plaque and calcium deposits from the heart and arteries‘ ($69 a month)

American Dream Nutrition don’t state who they have making their product line,

We have teamed up with several doctors, bio-chemists, formulators and manufacturers to produce our products.

Our manufacturing facilities are FDA regulated and operate under strict guidelines of Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP). Our manufacturers are some of the largest in the world.

Which doesn’t really doesn’t count for much without any specifics.

The American Dream Nutrition Compensation Plan

American Dream Nutrition offer members a matrix based compensation plan with retail and Fast Pay commissions along with various performance bonuses.

Retail Commissions

American Dream Nutrition offer members up to 60% commissions on all retail sales. The company does not provide any further specifics.

Fast Pay Commissions

American Dream Nutrition’s Fast Pay commissions are paid out when newly recruited American Dream Nutrition members make their first order.

Members earn a 50% commission (the other 50% goes to their upline) on their first two personally recruited member’s initial orders.

From the third recruited member onwards,  a 100% commission is earnt on their initial order and you earn 50% of their first two recruited member’s initial orders too. This commission structure is followed for all members thereafter.

Matrix Commissions

The residual commissions component of the American Dream Nutrition compensation plan comes from a 2×15 matrix.

A 2×15 matrix starts with you at the top and branches out into two legs underneath you. These two legs in turn then branch out into two additional legs each and so on and so forth, with the first few levels of the matrix looking something like this:

In total, a 2×15 matrix has 65,535 positions to fill and as you fill these positions, depending on which level of the matrix a recruited member falls on, American Dream Nutrition will pay you out a percentage commission on their orders.

  • Gold members earn 4% on levels 1-6 and 2% on levels 7-9
  • Platinum members earn 5% on levels 1-9
  • Diamond members earn 5% on levels 1-9 and 1% on levels 10-15
  • Double Diamond and Triple Diamond members earn 5% on levels 1-9 and 2% on levels 10-15

Note that retail and preferred customers do not take up any positions in the matrix.

Quarterly Corporate Bonus Pool

Each quarter American Dream Nutrition set aside 3% of the company’s commissionable volume and pays out this pool to qualified Diamond members.

Diamond members earn one share of the pool, Double Diamond two shares and Triple Diamonds 3 shares.

Car Bonus

Triple Diamonds are able to earn a Car Bonus that is paid out monthly at a rate of 1% of their total gross sales volume for the month.

There doesn’t appear to be any requirement that this bonus be put towards a car loan or purchase.

The American Dream Nutrition Membership Ranks

As above, the matrix commissions and the Quarterly Corporate Bonus Pool components of the American Dream Nutrition compensation plan are tied into membership ranks.

There are four membership ranks in American Dream Nutrition and along with their respective qualifications, they are as follows:

  • Gold Member – minimum $50 a month on autoship.
  • Platinum Member – minimum$100 a month on autoship.
  • Diamond Member – minimum $100 a month on autoship, must have at least 5 personally recruited Gold or Platinum members and a total matrix group volume of $10,000 a month.
  • Double Diamond Member – minimum $100 a month on autoship, must have at least 8 personally recruited Gold or higher members (2 must be Diamond or higher) and a total matrix group volume of $25,000 a month.
  • Triple Diamond Member – minimum $100 a month on autoship, must have  at least 12 personally recruited Gold of higher members (4 must be Diamond or higher) and a total matrix group volume of $50,000 a month.

Joining American Dream Nutrition

Membership to American Dream is tied into the purchase of products with the cheapest option being to order $50 of products a month and qualifying as a Gold Member. $100 a month qualifies you as a Platinum Member.

There is no way to progress from Gold to Diamond other than upping your monthly autoship to $100 a month.

For all intents and purposes, membership to American Dream Nutrition thus has two price points, $50 (Gold) and $100 (Platinum).

Conclusion

I have to admit that when I read the description of American Dream on the TriUnity website as being made up of ‘THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS of Autoship Distributors‘  that one of my red flags went up.

Not that autoship sales aren’t sales, but when you tie in membership to self-consumption, and then advertise your business as one full of autoship distributors, it brings up images of people with garages full of product they’ve purchased but never intend to use.

Of course when we’re talking small consumables like the American Dream Nutrition product line, there’s less of a chance that’ll happen… but the point still stands.

Through the combination of autoship and membership, American Dream Nutrition are forcing their members to self-consume. And however small the chance might be, it unnecessarily introduces the potential of autoship hoarding.

With one product this isn’t such an issue as you either want it or you don’t, but with multiple products there’s a good chance someone might just want one of the three products available. Unfortunately with a $100 minimum autoship requirement if they want to progress in the business that means that they might wind up buying an additional product they have no interest in using.

And if they can’t give it away… the only reason they’re purchasing it is to participate in the compensation plan, which doesn’t strike me as a genuine sale but rather an autoship scam.

Again though, this a potential risk and the chances of it happening will depend on how American Dream Nutrition is marketed by the company and its members.

Other than that, if the products work and you can find a market for them then I don’t see any further issues with the compensation plan. There’s an option for retail and if your customers like the product they have the option of signing up as a preferred customer and getting a discount, with no obligation to join the company themselves or participate in the compensation plan.

Considering however that the company provides little specific information on who is making their product for them, this might be a bit of an issue on the marketing side of things.

Moreso when you consider that none of American Dream Nutrition’s products are FDA approved (not a criticism in itself, but not exactly confidence-inspiring when you don’t know where they are sourcing their product from).

 

Update 17th October 2018 – updated American Dream Nutrition reviewAfter a reader requested we revisit the company, BehindMLM published an in October, 2018.

Spoiler: affiliate autoship recruitment is still a problem.