Oola Global operates in the personal development niche.

Back in 2012 Dave Braun and Troy Amdahl authored Oola: Find balance in an Unbalanced World.

From the Amazon book description;

Oola is not your typical self-help book. Oola is a “state of awesomeness,” it’s when your life is balanced and growing in the 7 key areas of life (Fitness, Finance, Family, Field, Faith, Friends, and Fun).

Oola reads more like a collection of kick-butt anecdotes and sincere stories that just happen to have meaningful messages.

Post-publicatio Braun and Amdahl turned Oola into a “lifestyle brand”‘. This included

a clothing line, live events, over one million followers, and a global coaching network with coaches in 17 countries and all 50 U.S. states.

Oola branded its live events as “Oolapalooza”. Some of the more recent live events were integrated into Young Living:

Oolapalooza 2020 was cancelled last August. The company opted not to put on an online production.

As at the time of publication Oolapalooza is scheduled for December 3rd, 2021. If all goes to plan, Oolapalooza 2021 will be held in Nashville, Tennessee.

2021 also saw Oola launch “Oola Global”, a fully-fledged MLM opportunity.

To get Oola Global off the ground Braun and Amdahl partnered up with Travis Ogden.

As per Ogden’s Oola Global corporate bio;

Travis Ogden has spent the past 8 years of his career leading two of the world’s largest network marketing companies.

His executive level experience with these billion-dollar companies includes positions as CFO, COO, President and CEO.

The two unnamed companies are Young Living and Isagenix.

Ogden worked as a Young Living executive until 2016. In 2016 Ogden joined Isagenix as Chief Operating Officer.

In 2018 Ogden was appointed CEO of Isagenix. Ogden left Isagenix in late 2020, which brings us to Oola Global’s launch in 2021.

On Oola Global’s website Dave Braun and Troy Amdahl are cited as founders of the company.

Ogden is cited as Oola Global’s CEO and a co-founder (presumably of the MLM opportunity, not Oola the brand).

Oola Global doesn’t provide a corporate address on its website. Oola’s LinkedIn profile states its company headquarters are in Virginia Beach in the US.

Read on for a full review of Oola Global’s MLM opportunity.

Oola Global’s Products

Oola Global retail customers sign up for $77 and then $47 a month thereafter.

This base membership provides access to

  • Design My Life Blueprint (a self-paced online course)
  • Breakthrough Experience (once a week for twelve weeks)
  • My Personalized Path (once a month personalized coaching)

Base Oola Globalretail membership is a gateway to the company’s paid products.

Oola Global’s website features a store in which apparel, books, courses and Oolapalooza event tickets are marketed.

Books

  • Oola – Find Balance in an Unbalanced World – $16.95 or $237 for a “20 book bundle”
  • Oola for Women – $16.95 of $284 for a “24 book bundle”
  • Oola for Christians – $16.95 or $237 for a “20 book bundle”

The product description for the single books and bundles are the same. I think this means the bundles are multiple copies of the same book (??).

If so, why anyone would need 20-24 copies of the same book is unclear.

Courses

  • Oola Green Gap Program – “a unique coaching program to help you create a path to financial wellbeing”, retails at $297
  • Unstuck – “3 Weeks of Private Coaching”, retails at $297
  • Transform – “10 Weeks of Private Coaching”, retails at $997
  • Accountability Coaching – “12 Sessions with your Oola Life Coach”, retails at $1200

This is the marketing copy for the Transform course;

This private, one-on-one coaching program is designed to help you take positive steps toward improving your life, career, relationships, finances and more.

Not only will you move forward with a whole new level of focus, you’ll be learning an entirely new way to approach life and create the unique lifestyle you want.

Each week for 10 intensive weeks, the Oola Guys—Dave Braun and Troy Amdahl—will deliver study modules straight to your email inbox that include learning tools, videos and exercises.

In between these modules, your Certified Oola Life Coach will work with you via private sessions (phone or Zoom), to develop the actual strategies, habits and systems that make “creating life balance” easier and more manageable.

Together, you’ll create a plan for tackling what YOU need to work on—plus your Coach will keep you accountable to achieving goals (and doing “the tough stuff”) as you bring your life into balance.

Accountability Coaching, intended to be purchased after one of the courses, is marketed as ‘the next step in keeping you on track as you pursue your Oola Life’.

Oolapalooza

  • Oolapalooza lounge tickets – $497
  • Oolapalooza balcony tickets (portal view) – $777
  • Oolapalooza balcony tickets (stage view) – $997
  • Oolapalooza floor tickets – $1197
  • Oolapalooza VIP tickets – $1497
  • Oolapalooza VVIP tickets – $1997

This is the product description for Oolapalooza VVIP tickets:

Up close and personal, these are the best seats in the house.

Additional benefits include a 1-on-1 personal coaching session with The Oola Guys and a private V-VIP reception on Friday night, including a special Nashville experience. And, you’ll be toting the best Swag Bag in the house to complete your V-VIP experience.

Tickets are non-refundable, but they are transferable.

Oola Global’s Compensation Plan

Oola Global’s compensation plan combines direct retail referral and recruitment commissions, with residuals paid out via a unilevel team.

Unilevel team commissions are expanded via an Infinity Bonus, with additional performance-based bonuses also available.

Oola Global Affiliate Ranks

There are fifteen affiliate ranks within Oola Global’s compensation plan.

Along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:

  • Silver – sign up as an Oola Global affiliate and generate and maintain 70 PV a month
  • Double Silver – maintain 70 PV a month and generate and maintain 400 GV a month
  • Triple Silver – generate and maintain 120 PV and 700 GV a month
  • Gold – generate and maintain 180 PV and 1200 GV a month (one unilevel leg with a minimum of 400 GV)
  • Double Gold – generate and maintain 220 PV and 2200 GV a month (two unilevel legs with a minimum 400 GV)
  • Triple Gold – generate and maintain 300 PV and 4000 GV a month (three unilevel legs with a minimum 700 GV)
  • Platinum – generate and maintain 350 PV and 7700 GV a month and have three unilevel team legs with a Gold or higher in each
  • Double Platinum – maintain 350 PV a month, generate and maintain 14,000 GV a month and have three unilevel team legs with a Double Gold or higher in each
  • Triple Platinum – maintain 350 PV a month, generate and maintain 27,000 GV a month and have three unilevel team legs with a Triple Gold or higher in each
  • Diamond – maintain 350 PV a month, generate and maintain 50,000 GV a month and have three unilevel team legs with a Platinum or higher in each
  • Double Diamond – maintain 350 PV a month, generate and maintain 100,000 GV a month and have three unilevel team legs with a Double Platinum or higher in each
  • Triple Diamond – maintain 350 PV a month, generate and maintain 200,000 GV a month and have three unilevel team legs with a Triple Platinum or higher in each
  • Blue Heart – maintain 350 PV a month, generate and maintain 400,000 GV a month and have three unilevel team legs with a Diamond or higher in each
  • Double Blue Heart – maintain 350 PV a month, generate and maintain 800,000 GV a month and have three unilevel team legs with a Double Diamond or higher in each
  • Triple Blue Heart – maintain 350 PV a month, generate and maintain 1,600,000 GV a month and have three unilevel team legs with a Triple Diamond or higher in each

Retail and Recruitment Referral Commissions

Oola Global pays commissions on referral of a retail customer and recruitment of an affiliate.

Commission rates for both referral and recruitment are the same.

Referral and recruitment commissions are paid out of the $77 first month subscription fee.

  • $37 is paid to the referring/recruiting affiliate
  • $7 is paid to their upline (the affiliate who recruited them, i.e. 2nd level upline)

Direct Residual Retail Commissions

Oola Global pays a residual commission on ongoing $47 a month retail subscriptions.

Any additional products purchased by retail customers also generates commissionable volume.

Residual retail commission rates are determined by an affiliate’s monthly PV generation:

  • generate 0 to 399 PV a month and receive a 10% residual retail commission rate
  • generate 400 to 999 PV a month and receive a 15% residual retail commission rate
  • generate 1000 to 1999 PV a month and receive a 20% residual retail commission rate
  • generate 2000 or more PV a month and receive a 25% residual retail commission rate

Residual Commissions

Oola Global pays residual commissions 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 recruit new affiliates, 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 theoretical infinite number of levels.

Oola Global caps payable unilevel team levels at seven.

Residual commissions are paid as a percentage of GV generated across these seven levels as follows:

  • Silvers earn 2% on level 1 (personally recruited affiliates)
  • Double Silvers earn 4% on level 1
  • Triple Silvers earn 6% on level 1 and 2% on level 2
  • Golds earn 8% on level 1 and 4% on level 2
  • Double Golds earn 10% on level 1, 6% on level 2 and 2% on level 3
  • Triple Golds earn 10% on level 1, 8% on level 2, 4% on level 3 and 2% on level 4
  • Platinums earn 10% on level 1, 8% on level 2, 6% on level 3, 4% on level 4 and 2% on level 5
  • Double Platinums earn 10% on level 1, 8% on level 2, 6% on level 3, 4% on level 4, 2% on level 5 and 1% on level 6
  • Triple Platinums and higher earn 10% on level 1, 8% on level 2, 6% on level 3, 4% on level 4, 2% on level 5 and 1% on levels 6 and 7

Infinity Bonus

The Infinity Bonus allows an Oola Global affiliate to earn beyond the first seven levels of their unilevel team.

Blue Heart and higher ranked Oola Global affiliates qualify for the Infinity Bonus as follows:

  • Blue Hearts earn a 0.25% Infinity Bonus on volume generated beyond level eight of their unilevel team
  • Double Blue Hearts earn a 0.35% Infinity Bonus on volume generated beyond level eight of their unilevel team
  • Triple Blue Hearts earn a 0.5% Infinity Bonus on volume generated beyond level eight of their unilevel team

Leadership Rewards Bonus

Platinum and higher ranked Oola Global affiliates earn a monthly Leadership Rewards Bonus.

  • Platinums receive $200
  • Double Platinums receive $500
  • Triple Platinums receive $1000
  • Diamonds receive $2000
  • Double Diamonds receive $3500
  • Triple Diamonds receive $7777
  • Blue Hearts receive $12,000
  • Double Blue Hearts receive $20,000
  • Triple Blue Hearts receive $30,000

Rank Achievement Bonus

Oola Global affiliates receive a Rank Achievement Bonus starting from the Gold rank.

  • qualify at Gold and receive $150 ($300 if qualified for within three months of signing up)
  • qualify at Platinum and receive $500 ($1000 if qualified for within six months of qualifying at Gold)
  • qualify at Diamond and receive $5000
  • qualify at Blue Heart and receive $25,000

The following upline bonuses are also paid at the Gold and Platinum ranks:

  • personally recruited affiliate qualifies as Gold = $150
  • personally recruited affiliate qualifies at Platinum = $500

Note that to qualify for the upline Rank Achievement Bonus, an affiliate must be at the same or higher rank than is being qualified for.

E.g. an affiliate must be Platinum or higher to qualify for the $500 Platinum upline Rank Achievement Bonus.

In the event the recruiting affiliate (upline) hasn’t rank qualified, the upline Rank Achievement Bonus is paid to the first rank qualified upline.

In the example above, $500 would be paid to the first upline Platinum or higher ranked affiliate above the recruiting affiliate.

Joining Oola Global

Oola Global affiliate membership is $177 and then $47 a month for the base membership, as well as a $50 annual affiliate fee.

Oola Global Conclusion

Personal development MLMs experienced a boom in the late 90s. This continued throughout the 2000s but by 2010 had mostly died off.

There are still a few smaller companies around but for the most part its a dead niche within the MLM industry. You’re far more likely to find personal development bundled into an MLM offering (e.g. Young Living’s Oolapalooza events), as opposed to personal development being the opportunity itself.

That’s not to knock Oola Global’s offering from the outset. It’s just some context to the MLM niche they’re entering into.

I haven’t read Oola’s books but from the sounds of it you’ve got a pretty standard self-help offering;

The Oola principles incorporate biblical teachings into practical, effective platforms to help you overcome the world and create the awesome life you were meant to have.

That’s the blurb from Oola’s “Christian book”. One point I will disagree on is nobody is “meant to have” anything in life. You work for what you have and, hopefully, make it somewhere in life.

Within that spectrum you have people born into wealth and privilege, others not so much. Regardless of where you find yourself, work on what you have to better it.

I personally believe the notion that anyone is entitled to anything beyond basic human rights, especially “because bible”, is not a philosophy to live by.

Moving onto Oola Global’s compensation plan, on the surface there are no retail volume requirements.

When you factor in only 100 PV of an affiliate’s own spend counts to required PV however, retail volume requirements are present. PV only counts an affiliate’s spend and member payments, with Oola Global excluding recruited affiliate’s from the “member pool”.

This means you can’t meet PV requirements by recruiting affiliates and generating PV off their monthly spend.

The only retail incentive available is Oola Global’s “Three and Free” program.

Three and Free Program: For each month in which an Ambassador has at least three (3) active, paying Members in his or her Member Pool, the Ambassador will receive a credit of $47
to cover the cost of his or her Oola subscription fee in the following month.

Refer and maintain three retail subscribers, and your own $47 a month subscription fee is waived. Again the explicit reference to “Members” excludes recruited affiliate subscriptions.

One figure absent from Oola Global’s compensation documentation is how much PV the $47 a month subscription payment generates.

Regardless, it isn’t going to be more than 47 PV (that would be a 1 PV:$1 ratio), so at the lowest Silver rank you’re still going to need an additional retail subscription to maintain rank.

These integrated retail volume qualifiers should steer Oola Global away from pyramid scheme concerns that are/were often present personal development MLMs.

What we come back to though are Oola Global’s products, with the eventual goal being annual attendance of their live events. Not to take anything away from Oola’s earlier events, but we living in a different times.

There’s also the elephant in the room of Oola Global first attaching itself to Young Living, and now going off on its own as an MLM opportunity. What prompted this?

Was it a decline in company-wide revenue via the existing marketing model? If that’s the case (I can’t see any other reason), perhaps the books themselves and general philosophy behind Oola Global needs an overhaul.

A revision from the 2012 original work before launching the MLM company would have probably been a good idea.

If you want a taste of what Oola Global is about without signing up first, the company’s book are readily available second-hand for a couple of dollars.

For anyone pursuing Oola Global as an MLM opportunity, $47 a month after the initial costs isn’t much month to month but can add up. Keep track of how your business is going month to month versus your accumulated spend.

If your Oola Global MLM business hasn’t gotten anywhere within six months, it might be time to move on.

 

Update 30th November 2022 – Oola Life has been acquired by Usana.

Since publication of this review, Oola has dropped “Global” from its name. The company has also introduced nutritional supplements.

As per a November 28th press-release, Usana has stated Oola will continue to “operate independently”,

SimilarWeb tracks negligible traffic to Oola’s website, suggesting there’s not much going on.

 

Update 10th May 2023 – The cited press-release in the above November 2022 update has been deleted.

The update originally contained a link to the press-release. Due to its deletion I’ve now disabled the previously accessible link.