LivinItGlobal Review: Complicated comp plan & autoship

LivinItGlobal are based out of the US state of Utah and operate in the weight loss and energy drink MLM niches.

Credited as CEO of the company on the LivingItGlobal website is Randy Heaton (right).

As per Heaton’s LivinItGlobal corporate bio,

Mr. Heaton has been very successful in building many different, multi-million dollar companies.

He has had extensive experience building huge organizations in the Direct Sales Industry.

He has achieved some of the highest positions in those companies; companies such as Nu Skin, Xocai, Zrii, eXfuze and Xooma.

Heaton was also a master distributor with Xenesta (health and nutrition).

Despite being involved in a number of MLM opportunities, LivinItGlobal would appear to be Heaton’s first MLM venture as an executive.

Read on for a full review of the LivinItGlobal MLM business opportunity.

The LivinItGlobal Product Line

A number of products feature on the LivinItGlobal website, a brief outline of each is provided below.

• LivinItH2O+ (120 serving bottle for $90) – a drink additive that “provides improved hydration to help promote function of all the organs that regulate the water content of cells throughout the body”
• LivinItUp+ ($12-$100, available in various sizes) – “an all-natural energy product that has serious antioxidant support”
• LivinItActive (60 servings for $45) – another “all-natural energy product” that “acts as an anti-inflammatory, helps you recover faster, focus better and puts you in a great mood”
• LivinItPRO (60 servings for $90) – an “all natural male & female performance enhancer”
• LivinItSlim Libido (listed as four bottle purchase for $360) – “may help with fat burning by increasing your lean muscle mass and helping as an appetite suppressant, it may also help block carbohydrates and help to promote a pleasant mood”
• LivingItCinnaMint, LivinItPepperMint and LivinItFruitMint ($90 a bottle) – “eat candy & manage your weight!” (garcinia cambogia)
• LivinItFocused (60 servings for $90) – “mood, memory, mental focus & clarity”
• LIG-T Energy Band (sold in pairs for $50) – “may help with balance, energy & strength”

The LivinItGlobal Compensation Plan

The LivingItGlobal compensation plan is poorly presented. It appears to have been cobbled together by someone who understands the plan but doesn’t care if anyone else does.

I had a hard time making sense of the mountains of paragraphs in the official documentation, but have done my best to put together a much simplified breakdown below.

Commission Qualification

LivinItGlobal affiliates must sign up for autoship in order to qualify for MLM commissions.

The amount of autoship required to be signed up for ranges from 50 PV to 150 PV a month.

Retail Commissions

Retail commissions are offered on the sale of LivinItGlobal products to retail customers.

An example in the official LivinItGlobal compensation documentation cites a $30 retail commission off a $90 product purchase.

A 20% retail commissions are also paid on autoship orders made by retail customers, provided an affiliate has signed up with a Rapid Rewards affiliate pak ($30 – $5000).

Recruitment Commissions

When joining LivinItGlobal an affiliate can choose to sign up with a “Business Builder Pak”.

These paks range in price from $30 to $5000, with commissions paid out on the recruitment of affiliates who sign up with one as follows:

• $30 Business Builder Pak – $5
• $60 Business Builder Pak – $10
• $120 Business Builder Pak – $20
• $200 Business Builder Pak – $40
• $300 Business Builder Pak – $60
• $500 Business Builder Pak – $100
• $1000 Business Builder Pak – $200
• $2500 Business Builder Pak – $500
• $5000 Business Builder Pak – $1000

Note that an affiliate can only earn up to the pak level that they themselves bought in at.

As per the LivinItGlobal compensation plan material,

If you purchased a $30 Business Builder Pak your Fast Start or Cash back bonus is $5.

This $5 appears to be paid out irrespective of what pak a newly recruited affiliate purchases.

Residual Commissions

Residual commissions in LivinItGlobal are paid out via a unilevel compensation structure.

A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):

If any level 1 affiliates go on to recruit new affiliates of their own, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.

If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretically infinite number of levels.

Commissions are paid out as a percentage of the sales volume generated by affiliates in a unilevel team, paid out as follows:

• recruit at least two affiliates – 2.5%
• recruit and maintain at least two affiliates who generate a minimum 250 GV per month – 3.5%

Note that GV stands for “Group Volume. This is sales volume generated by a unilevel team (downline).

Upline Matching Bonus (unilevel)

LivinItGlobal affiliates who qualify at the Marketing Representative rank are paid a 5% matching bonus. This can be increased to 10% via rank promotion.

This matching bonus is paid out on unilevel commissions earned by recruited affiliates an upline places in your unilevel team.

Executive Pay Match (unilevel)

This commission is extremely confusing. It seems to be in addition to the upline matching bonus, being 25% of the 5% paid out.

This commission however pays on personally recruited affiliate’s earnings, which differs from the upline matching bonus.

Basically you’re looking at 25% of 5%. They earn $10,000 a month and as an Executive Match Bonus you would be paid $125 (5% of $10,000 is $500 and then 25% of that is $125).

Seems kind of pointless but it’s in the compensation plan documentation so I’ve included it here.

Generation Matching Bonus

Just in case two matching bonuses weren’t confusing enough, LivinItGlobal also pay out a third by way of generations.

Thankfully this is the most straight-forward of the matching bonuses, with a generation defined by Executive Marketing Representative ranked affiliates.

Each unilevel leg is treated individually for the purpose of defining generations. And if no Executive Marketing Representative is found in a leg, the first generation runs down till the last affiliate in that particular unilevel leg.

Once a generation has been defined in a unilevel leg (note that an affiliate must also be an Executive Marketing Representative or higher to qualify), a 25% matching bonus (on unilevel commissions) is paid out on all affiliates in that generation.

Autoship Commissions (Rapid Rewards)

Dubbed “Rapid Rewards” LivinItGlobal pay a specific commission on autoship payments by recruited affiliates.

In order to qualify for autoship commissions, a LivingItGlobal affiliate must purchase specific “Rapid Rewards” affiliate paks (min $30).

They then need to recruit at least two affiliates who buy the same pak (and same autoship amount each month).

Once this is achieved, a “close to 20%” commission is paid out each month on the autoship payment of any recruited affiliate who is on matching autoship.

Lifestyle Bonus

For every 12,500 GV a LivinItGlobal affiliate and their downline generates, a $350 commission is paid out.

This is a rolling commission, paid out every time the 12,500 GV milestone is reached.

Additional Compensation Plan Positions

When a LivinItGlobal affiliate has generated $50,000 GV in a week, they are rewarded with an additional compensation plan position.

With this position, they can effectively double up on sales volume generated by their downline.

Commission Cap

In the event a commissions earned by LivinItGlobal affiliates constitutes more than 50% of sales revenue, the company will adjust (cap) affiliate commissions until the amount paid out is equal to 50%.

Joining LivinItGlobal

Basic affiliate membership with LivinItGlobal is $40.

Signing up with a Business Builder Pak ranges in price from $30 to $5000 on top of this.

The primary advantage of signing up with a Business Builder Pak is product discounts and income potential via the LivinItGlobal compensation plan.

Conclusion

Before we get into the nuts and bolts of the LivinItGlobal business opportunity, I have to comment again on the presentation of the official compensation plan documentation.

It’s terrible.

As someone who spends an inordinate amount of time making sense of every MLM compensation plan I come across, I feel confident in asserting that Joe Bloggs isn’t going to be able to make heads or tails of LivinItGlobal’s business model.

Here’s just one example, presented in the first few pages of the plan.

The company appears to describe some sort of unilevel, but they make it sound like a straight-line queue:

In this straight forward plan you have a Single Team that is developed through your efforts those that you sponsor as well as the efforts of your up-line placing partners below you that you can earn the ability to receive commissions on.

As you personally sponsor new Members into your organization, you create an unlimited number of Members front-line to you.

As these Members develop their businesses, they will also create an unlimited number of Members front-line to them. These members will be on levels below you, which will represent your Sponsorship Organization.

A unilevel where your upline can create positions? And it’s obviously not a straight-line queue because the system tracks multiple levels as per a regular unilevel.

Oh and there’s no diagrams explaining any of this, just the big wall of text above.

Later in the plan the company goes onto describe a regular unilevel, but even that’s a confusingly messed up:

Members you personally sponsor help create a second organization called your personally “Sponsorship Organization.”

In your Sponsorship Organization the Members you personally sponsor are placed on your first level (unlimited expansion). The Members they personally sponsor are placed on your second level…and so on.

Note the repeated use of the “Sponsorship Organization”. One name to describe two compensation structures within the same compensation plan!

No wonder I had a headache by the time I was done trying to make sense of it all.

First things first, LivinItGlobal really need to go back to the drawing board re. their official compensation plan documentation.

I don’t need everything spelled out but the confusion factor needs to be reduced by a factor of about 85-95%. It’s useless in its current format.

That out of the way, behind the confusion of the comp plan there is a readily retailable product line.

The only thing LivinItGlobal lost me on were the LIG-T Energy Bands:

The LIG-T Energy Band wristbands are made of 100% silicone.

Each band features an exclusive LIG-T Energy Band Hologram, embedded with proprietary holographic technology.

$25 silicone straps with “holographic technology”?

Riiiiiiiiight.

Unfortunately despite retail being possible, the core of the LivinItGlobal opportunity is rooted in autoship. Specifically recruiting new affiliates and getting them on monthly autoship orders.

Rank promotion requires mandatory autoship, which ensures that every LivinItGlobal participating in the MLM opportunity is going to be on autoship.

This ties in with the compensation plan, which is pretty much just a complicated mess of autoship commissions, paid out directly and via team volume.

At no point are retail sales required or encouraged.

Chain recruitment rears its ugly head as well, by way of direct recruitment commissions paid out on affiliates who join with a pak.

The argument that these are product commissions goes out the window when one considers that, not only do the paks go up in price to $5000, but that retail customers aren’t going to be purchasing affiliate paks anytime soon.

These paks exist solely to maximize commissions on affiliate recruitment.

And it gets worse when one considers the blatant pay to play element said paks contain.

Larger Business Builder Paks pay out higher Fast Start or Cash Back Bonuses.

Want to qualify as a Senior Manager? Just drop $1000 on a Stimulus Bonus Builder Pak ($1000).

That’ll get you 12 weeks of Senior Manager rank, with $5000 dropped on a Professional Business Builder Pak getting you 24 weeks (6 months).

And not a single retail sale in sight!

I’d be very surprised to learn of any retail activity taking place within LivinItGlobal. Instead you’re probably going to find an opportunity full of affiliates paying autoship fees each month, and earnings from those they’ve recruited doing the same.

Don’t take my word for it though, if you’re reading this as a prospective LivinItGlobal affiliate, be sure to ask the person prospecting you about their retail figures versus “team commissions”.

One last thing I’ll mention is the company name: LivinItGlobal.

Surely if you’re going to have the word “global” in your company name you’d have an opportunity that was… well, y’know – global?

Nope.

LivinItGlobal is only available to affiliates (and presumably customers) in the US.

Which bright spark came up with that idea?