Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Success on YOUR terms

Just got finished speaking at the Tuesday briefing here at HQ and am always so pumped up.

Every person in that packed room tonight has the potential to achieve their goals. There is not one person there who by the very decision they will make tonight, and the commitment to plug into the system we've created, can't succeed at a level that will give them everything they always wanted.

It's not about years of study or hours of contemplation - but a flash of a moment where they decide to turn things around, physically and financially.

Better health. Freedom from debt. For real -- not just some radio ad. When you combine the passionate desire society has to lose weight and get fit with an opportunity to earn income with products that are world famous, you have life-changing opportunity. That's what being a coach means.

Just like we created fitness and weight loss programs that walk you through a success system that are guaranteed to get you results, so will the Team Beachbody Network. Work it, and it works.

The world changes when YOU are in control of your circumstances. But nobody GIVES you control. You have to step up, and earn control. You have to step up and be in control. And stay after it, every day. That's how you succeed on your terms!

Everybody, Pay It Forward

Tony and Beachbody are showing gratitude for the patience, loyalty and trend-ending heroics of our customers and coaches by making an offer in July that will pay off for everyone involved:

To celebrate the launch of "Volume 2" of Tony's One-On-One series, and celebrate Tony's birthday on July 2nd, new subscribers pay just $.01 for their first month (plus $1,000 s&h... kidding! $2.95 s&h) for an amazing Cardio Intervals routine.

Plus both new and current subscribers get the new "Volume 2" DVD wallet that holds the next year's worth of fabulous Hortonosity.

And to share in all this kindness; the July One-on-One DVD ships with a FREE workout called “Pay It Forward”. The Pay It Forward DVD is a first for Beachbody, where we asked a 400lb person to go through a routine with Tony. he did, and he loved it!

Your job -- give that DVD away to someone who thinks that fitness (and Tony Horton) is not accessible to them. This is a great starter program. Again, your job - give it to someone and let them see how good they can feel after just 20 mins!

It's a special launch of year two of One-on-One. Tony (and I) are exceptionally grateful to the people who made it through year one and are ready for more!

Friday, June 26, 2009

It's Time To Lead


While some accept the status quo, for others the status quo begs a leader to make things better.

The mark of a leader is someone who is willing to take risks, to step out of the safety zone of accepting the status quo. Leaders are change agents, and they make things happen that can move things in a big way. (That doesn't mean they're right, it just means they are the ones who make things happen. And they're usually the ones that make the money.)

Leadership is rare, and when it is directed toward something that truly benefits society at large, they are valuable. Leaders are the ones who hear people saying "that's not how it's done," and they forge ahead anyway. They try something, hear friends, family (and even customers) say "That's just stupid", they learn, and they continue to work through the criticism.

But the more bold the leader is, the more people there are who will say that leader is wrong. If you are leading, there will always someone who thinks you are wrong. Do it anyway.

Not everyone has what it takes to be a leader. I am a big fan of helping people see their potential to step into a leadership role, but I have been guilty of thinking everyone has what it takes to handle the criticism and also self-start. But over the years I have learned that leaders who are ready will step into the role when given the opportunity. I see it everyday on the TeamBeachbody Message Boards, Facebook and Twitter as coaches step up and help people get results and build a business out of helping people. There are great leaders out there, and great leaders emerging.

I had a conversation today with 5 star diamond Charline Bucher, a founding coach and a true Team Beachbody leader. We were talking about how we're seeing people succeed in this business who are consistent with achieving base hits vs. swinging for home runs. Day by day, sale by sale, coach by coach, leaders in network marketing make small progress and encourage other leaders in their organizations to do the same. That's the activity that works.

The people who achieve exponential growth in this business are the ones who are always looking for leaders in their organization, and focusing their efforts on building momentum with them rather than trying to pull everyone along. If you focus on the people who can help us get to one million coaches and 100 million customers, your business will grow. If you focus on trying to get everyone to join the business, you won't have time to work with the true leaders, and the business will languish and always require you to baby sit.

Attracting leaders creates a foundation on which the network will flourish. Strength in leadership equals a strong network that will help millions of people.

That's the point of the Leadership event that Michael Neimand, Larry Zimberg, Denise Needham, the rest of our network team and I are staging this October 17th and 18th. It's not for everyone. You have to qualify and want to break out of the pack to be a real leader in building this business. If you want to go big with this opportunity, you need to get to this event.

The following criteria needs to be achieved by August 30, 2009. Either...

A. Achieve the Paid Rank of Diamond Coach or higher and have sponsored a Paid Rank Diamond Coach who is active as of August 30th.

- or -

B. Achieve a Paid Rank of Diamond Coach or higher, and recruit at least two new active Coaches this June, July, and August (for a minimum of six new active Coaches with at least two in each month), all of whom are active and in good standing as of August 30th.

With only 4 days left to meet the June requirement, it’s decision time. Will you be one of our select group of Coaches who join me to lead the way forward? What do you want your life to look like a year from now? Every journey starts with a single step and your first step is to get to this exclusive leadership event. June qualifications are almost up so get focused, have intent, recruit your two new active Coaches for June!

Then we'll be training you and this elite group of leaders on the new "Game Plan", and as a leader, we'll give you a complimentary two night stay at the Ritz-Carlton, Laguna Niguel in Dana Point, California. (Get a good look at the pool now, because we won't be spending time there during the event. This is like training camp!) We want to initiate a huge push, a game-changing initiative which will signal the explosive growth in this network we have all been planning.

If you're a leader and want to build a business that pays you dividends every year, and you want to be a force of positive change in the health of the world, it is time.

I look forward to seeing you at the Leadership event in Dana Point! But you need to step up now!

Saturday, June 13, 2009

A Little Help From My Friends

I spent the week on Twitter and Facebook learning from my "friends" how we can use these social networks to promote health and build the Beachbody coach business. Though I see what all the buzz is about, I definitely see the pitfalls.

These sites are like a party. The last thing you want to do is walk into a party and yell “I am here to sell you products!” That type of behavior isn’t accepted at a party, and I doubt it’s any different online.

In the pursuit of expanding our coach network, prospecting makes sense to me. But I don't think “broadcasting” sales messages via the social networks of friends is the best approach.

We established the Beachbody Network so when you get healthy results you could profit when someone notices and asks “Wow, what are you doing?” That’s how you turn your hard work and behavior change into revenue. You become the proof that it works!

That model translates well to social media like MySpace, Facebook and Twitter, where friends connect, share updates, and care about each other. What the health crisis in our country needs is people helping people. So the best action to leverage social media is to share what you are doing to inspire others, to celebrate the success of your team, and to pay attention to what people are saying.

When you have results to report or a photo to post during your transformation, NOTHING will get people’s attention faster than saying "Check out my 90 days photos -- Unbelievable!"And that facilitates a two-way conversation. Social media and networking is about starting a conversation. It’s a dialogue. It’s the first time in the history of marketing where businesses big or small must get back to the basics of listening. Listening is what separates the good friends from the not so good. As I read in Stephen Baker's recent article in Business Week, the value of information within these social media networks has dropped to zero. What is valuable, is attention; getting it and giving it.

That's how network marketing beats mass marketing every time; People get to know each other, and help each other achieve their goals.That makes you a good friend, not the Internet’s version of a door-to-door salesman. When a friend of yours gets results they’ll want to share it with their immediate sphere of influence. And your business continues to grow because you added value to the equation. You didn't take - you gave a service.

And that friend to friend service is the point of this whole thing. People have proposed to me that they could explode our business by getting actor Ashton Kutcher to become a coach and leverage his visibility talking about P90X on Twitter. As exciting as it is when celebs buy our products and talk about them, we aren’t looking to simply make more sales through their endorsement. We want this movement toward a healthy lifestyle to transcend a cult of personality, so it gets woven into the very fabric of our culture again.It's not about Ashton. It's not about me. It's not about Tony, Chalene, Debbie or Shaun T. It's about you. It's about your friends. I want YOU to be the star of this success story. We want you to help people you are the closest to. We want it to be on a personal, human level.

It’s not about spamming. It’s about sharing, listening, acknowledging and helping.

I believe that approach will make you a valuable friend in the web 2.0 world, and that’s the kind of service to others that will build your personal network in a meaningful way. I'll see you on Twitter and Facebook, and let's keep this party growing!

Monday, June 08, 2009

The Half-Price Life Saver

Last week we dropped the price of Kathy Smith's Project YOU for Type 2, a resource created in conjunction with the American Diabetes Association, in an aggressive push to help people avoid diabetes or manage the disease.

Looks like people are getting on board in a big way! Online sales jump up ten times over the sales for the prior week. That's big.
This is the first-ever comprehensive approach to eating right and exercise for both pre-diabetics and people with diabetes. It is a 12-week approach to losing weight and turning things around, but the results can be life-long.

For anyone who faces that dreadful moment in a doctor's office when he says "you are pre-diabetic and need to make some changes" or worse, "you have diabetes," there becomes this vacuum of resources that are reliable and comprehensive.

Support groups abound, but a system that walks a person step-by-step through the lifestyle changes they could follow to make an enormous difference just never existed in one convenient place, until fitness icon Kathy Smith and former president of the ADA Dr. Francine Kaufman team up with the ADA to create this program. Beachbody wanted to support their vision aggressively, and the best way to do that was to make it more affordable with a 30 day money back guarantee. Now people can try it and see what needs to be done, and make the decision for themselves, "Am I worth it?"

And guess what: YOU ARE WORTH IT! And successful results are easier to achieve than you thought, when you have a system that works. "Project: YOU!" is the system. Now is the time.

Thanks to everyone for helping us get the word out about this special promotion, planned to stay valid through the end of July. If you know someone who's life is affected by diabetes, this is the time to take advantage of a great half price offer, and a great product that is literally saving lives!

Thursday, June 04, 2009

What We Do Is Patriotic!

I spent the last two days in Washington, DC speaking with Congressmen, lobbyists, and the President's Personnel Office (PPO) about Team Beachbody, and the importance of promoting a balanced approach to health and fitness.

I urged everyone I met to use us as a resource and sounding board, thinking beyond the highly publicized insurance aspect of the health care crisis to how we get people HEALTHY.

Beachbody and its coaches do it everyday, with intense focus on how to make health and fitness exciting, convenient, and affordable. And we have invested millions in connecting people to a new site of peer support that will be the epicenter of it's own revolution after it launches June 10th.

I asked the PPO, which is steering the formation of the President's Council on Fitness and Health on behalf of President Obama, to consider alternatives to the traditional appointments and instead look for ways to empower individuals to take accountability for their health and fitness.

As important as scientific advice is to helping make sure people are doing the right thing to get healthy results, and as inspiring as speeches by fitness celebrities can be to attract attention to the concept, what we need is a grassroots movement where millions of people take accountability for themselves and their health - the way so many Beachbody coaches and customers are doing every day.

Normally faced with blank stares and responses like "what's an infomercial guy going to tell me about getting people healthy?", I was incredibly encouraged by the attitude and enthusiasm for what we are doing.

Between meetings I managed to get in my own run around the Capital. I stopped at the Lincoln Memorial and took a moment to read the Gettysburg Address inscribed on the wall. It's truly one of the greatest speeches in American History, and will inspire anyone to fight for the preservation - and underlying health - of this country and its constitutional freedoms. I felt a sense of patriotic duty to continue investing in our momentum and celebrating the people who are helping us succeed.

From time to time I will return to DC to create new relationships and expand awareness of Beachbody's mission to help people achieve their goals and lead healthy fulfilling lives. And I will always be proud of the connection our company and our coaches have to reversing the health crisis. We are the change. I believe that. We are helping restore the health and prosperity of this country by inviting our friends and neighbors to get active and paying them for helping others get healthy and fit.

I am so proud of what we do and the enthusiasm with which we do it. Thank you for being a part of building this, as we only just begun on our quest for one million coaches and 100 million customers!