Optavia MLM Review: Is Optavia A Pyramid Scheme or Scam?

Welcome to my Optavia MLM Review.

You probably came to this page because you wonder if Optavia is a pyramid scheme or legit?

No need to worry you’re in the right place for the answers to these questions.

Over the last few years, I’ve been busy creating reviews about all kinds of online products.

Some turned out to be fake others were legit ways to make money online but in the process, I learned how to spot scams.

In this post, I’ll show you absolutely everything you need to know about Optavia and after reading it you’ll know exactly if you should give it a chance.

Optavia MLM Review Overview

Name: Optavia
Website: Optavia.com
Founder: Dr. Wayne Scott Andersen, William Vitale
Product Type: Weightloss MLM Program
Earning Potential: Low
Price: $199,00

Summary:
Optavia is a weight loss MLM program that sells plans containing low calory and high-protein small meals. Optavia isn’t a pyramid scheme but because of the price and the MLM model, it has a low success rate. 

Down in the review, I have a table showing how much active distributors are earning at the moment and it’s a bit different from what is being advertised about the opportunity by recruiters.

I do think it’s possible to earn money with Optavia but only if you’re part of a very specific group. Read the review to find out what I mean.
Similar to: 
Younique MLM program, OneHope Wine MLM program, MaryKay MLM program, Amsoil MLM program, Savvi MLM Program, Trades of Hope MLM program
Recommended: No

Interested in learning how to make money without face-to-face selling or recruiting?

What is Optavia?

Optavia is a subsidiary company of Medifast inc founded by Dr. Wayne Scott Andersen and William Vitale. Optavia is an MLM company that sells products geared toward people interested in Weightloss. 

Their main products are diet plans consisting of 100-calorie fuelings that have to be combined with lean protein meals for optimal weight loss.

Optavia was created in 2001 under its previous name “Take Shape for Life” as a personal coach-client system. Optavia is based at 100 International Drive, 18th Floor, Baltimore, MD 21202. 

Read the review to learn more.

How does Optavia work?

In short, Optavia distributes and sells products for health, anti-aging, and wellness-related products. They have chosen to use the MLM model to distribute their products. This is important to know because they give people 3 choices to earn money:

• Selling the products directly to potential customers for a commission
• Recruiting people and earning bonuses based on their performance.
• Training your team in order to earn commissions

What is MLM?

MLM (a.k.a network marketing, pyramid selling, or direct selling) stands for multi-level marketing.

According to Wikipedia, multi-level marketing is a marketing strategy for the sale of products or services where the revenue is derived from a non-salaried workforce.

As a part of this workforce, you sell the products from the company, and/or you recruit people to do the same thing. This group of people you recruit will work under you and is referred to as your downline.

The bigger your downline is the more money you can earn passively (technically speaking) because you’re getting paid a percentage based on the performance of your downline.

This also means the person that recruited you which is called your upline is making money based on your performance.

The act of recruiting turns an MLM company into a pyramid-shaped organization where the first people to join make the most and are on the top of the pyramid and those last to join are at the bottom.

Source: Wikipedia

MLMs have been around for a long time. There are Multi-level marketing companies active today that were founded in the 1900s. MLM has a lot in common with pyramid schemes which is why scammers often use MLM to disguise their pyramid schemes.

Is it absolutely necessary to recruit people? No. not in a legitimate mlm company.

You can also stick to just selling products that you can order and re-sell to make a profit.

This is easier said than done for multiple reasons which is why most members try to recruit others so they can earn more money.

How to join The Optavia MLM Program

Most people get referred to Optavia but you can also sign-up through their website and get assigned a coach.

After that, you can become an Optavia coach by following these 3 steps.

Step 1: Purchase your Business Kit
Step 2: Sign Your Agreement
Step 3: Engage in OPTAVIA Coach Community & Start Sharing

Step 1: Purchase your Business Kit

Each OPTAVIA Coach Business Kit costs $199 and includes:

• 1 OPTAVIA Success System Binder, containing a Health Assessment paper pad, instruction sheet, and 3 file folders
• 1 New Coach Steps to Success Brochure
• 1 Coaching Guide for the Habits of Health Transformational System
• 1 Optimal Weight 5 & 1 Plan Client Introduction Pack (pack includes 10)
• 1 OPTAVIA Guide
• 1 Optimal Weight 4 & 2 & 1 Plan Guide

Plus, Business Accessories:

• Pen Set with four (4) OPTAVIA pens
• OPTAVIA Journal
• Independent OPTAVIA Coach Bottle
• OPTAVIA Pop Socket
• OPTAVIA Blank Notecard Set (pack of 10)
• OPTAVIA Slinky Notepad
• OPTAVIA Tech Decals for use on your electronic devices

Step 2: Sign Your Agreement

The agreement lists all your rights and the terms and conditions for working as an Optivia coach.

Step 3: Engage in OPTAVIA Coach Community & Start Sharing

Get access to your virtual office which is your hub from where you manage sales, recruit, get training, and find online resources needed for marketing Optavia products.

Something you also have to take into account which isn't mentioned on the opt-in page of Optavia is that you have to place 5 orders or recruit 5 coaches per month to maintain the lowest rank.

Who can benefit from Optavia?

Who would benefit from joining the Optavia MLM program:

• Expert salesmen
• Expert recruiters
• People that already have an audience

Who shouldn’t join the Optavia MLM program:

• People that hate sales jobs.
• People that hate recruiting
• People that don’t have the budget for it
• People that expect to earn passive income
• People that expect to earn a full-time income

Optavia MLM Company products

Optavia products are geared toward people that want to lose weight.

Their main products are their plans that include special fuelings.

These feelings consist of bars, shakes, cookies, cereal, and savory options, like soup and smashed potatoes mostly in powdered form or bars.

Every fueling contains somewhere around 100 to 110 calories.

The rest of the diet consists of lean and green meals which you can buy and prepare yourself.

The lean and green meals mostly should contain

• Cooked lean protein like chicken, egg whites, turkey, or fish
• vegetables like lettuce, greens, celery, or cucumbers
• healthy fats like olive oil, olives, or avocado

Optavia has 3 main plans:

Optimal Weight 5 & 1 Plan – $378.25 (over 30 days)
This plan requires you to eat 6 small meals (consisting of 5 feelings and 1 lean and green meal) per day every 2-3 hours

Optimal Weight 4 & 2 & 1 Plan – $423.00 (over 30 days)
This plan contains 4 fuelings, 2 lean and green, and 1 snack per day every 2-3 hours.

Optimal Health 3 & 3 Plan – $20,75 per 7 servings
This plan consists of three balanced meals and three Optimal Health Fuelings each day.

Is Optavia FDA approved?

FDA doesn’t go over shakes and powders such as the Optavia fuelings.

Is Optavia overpriced?

As soon as you have to buy $400 a month for a diet plan (that doesn’t include the lean and green meals), I’d consider this overpriced. 

The moment you have reached your ideal weight, you still have to buy the feelings to maintain your weight. This means you’ll most likely spend thousands of dollars which add up quickly.

Pros and Cons

Pros

1. Products have tangible benefits

Unlike for example essential oils, diets like these are for the most part backed up by science. It’s known that going into a calorie deficit will make you lose weight. 

It makes it easier to sell products because you can always point to the science behind them.

2. 30-day refund policy

Optavia has a 30-day refund policy which shows they’re confident in the results their products can bring in that time frame. This also takes care of another objection potential buyers could have when thinking about buying the product.

3. Endorsed by celebrities
The star chef Buddy Valastro of the show “Cake Boss” contributes his 75-pound weight loss to the Optavia diet. While he says that everyone is different so it might not necessarily work that well for others it’s still something you can refer to when trying to sell the diet plans.

Cons

1. The chances of succeeding seem to be very low 
The income disclosure that Optavia has published tells the entire story. It’s possible to earn money with Optavia but the success rate is very low. 74% of coaches aren’t making more than $200 a month (excluding maintenance costs)

2. You’re only a coach in name
When you join Optavia and purchase their business kit, you’ll get the title of coach. As a member, you aren’t an actual health coach. It’s just what they call people that join the independent workforce of Optavia as a distributor.

3. Products are overpriced
The cheapest plan will cost you at least $400 a month excluding the lean and green meals. This is a lot more than most diet plans on the market. I wouldn’t be surprised if as an independent coach you’ll have a hard time selling these plans.

Optavia Compensation Plan

Optavia can be considered a traditional MLM when looking at its compensation plan. You either sell their products for a commission or you can recruit people and receive residual income, climb up the ranks, and earn bonuses.

In total there are 16 ranks that all come with their benefits such as getting a higher commission percentage of all your sales.

Optavia divides its methods into 3 categories:

1.CLIENT ACQUISITION & SUPPORT
This is basically just selling their products face-to-face for a commission of 15%. You also can get additional commission the moment you have sold products to 5 people.

2. COACH SPONSORING & TEAMBUILDING 
That’s what they call the recruiting aspect of it all. These team growth bonuses range from 4% to 12% based on your level 2 recruited and below.

3. ADVANCED TEAM BUILDING & LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT

These are also recruiting bonuses you’re eligible for when you get the title of regional director or higher. These are also additional commissions that range from 1.5% to 2.5%.

How much does it cost to start an Optavia “business”?

Like most MLM companies, you’ll have to make a financial investment to join as an Optivia coach

How much you’ll have to pay differs per country.

For this post, I mostly focused on what it’d be like if you joined Optivia in the United States of America but most countries seem to be around the same price range.

When you sign-up you’ll have to buy an enrollment kit.

This enrollment kit is called The Business Kit. 

This kit costs $199 and contains tools, plan information, and 12 months of free access to your personalized OPTAVIA website, and much more.

You start at the lowest level with the rank coach. This rank requires the lowest financial investment while still being eligible for commissions. 

To maintain this rank you need at the very least have 5 ordering entities. 

This means 5 people placing orders for fuelings or recruiting 5 coaches. 

The cheapest option would be going with the 5 orders. 

To place an order you have to pay upfront and sell it to the client(Allthough it still counts if you only purchase the products).

The cheapest fuelings seem to be $23,25. 

This means every month you’ll be spending a minimum of 5 x $23,25 = $116,25

In a year you’ll spend 12 x $116,25 = $1.395 to fulfill the quota.

Add the mandatory business kit and overall, you’ll end up in your first year spending ($1.395 + $199 =)  $1.594 at the lowest rank. 

This number increases if you’ll be promoted to a higher rank.

This also doesn’t take into account additional costs such as:

• advertising or promotional expenses
• product samples
• training
• rent (for conferences)
• travel (for conferences)
• telephone and internet costs
• other miscellaneous expenses.
  
  

How much can you earn with Optavia?

Optavia gives their coaches multiple ways to make money in the form of commissions and bonuses which I’ve talked about earlier but they don’t show the whole story in my opinion.

I’m more interested in the real numbers of people already working as coaches. Luckily, Optavia has published an income disclosure.

This income disclosure is based on independent coaches that are US residents so I thought I’d compare it to the average full-time US income which is  $51,490 and other numbers.

Key takeaways from this income disclosure 

Here are my key takeaways after doing a deep dive into their income disclosure. 

Optavia isn’t a great option for people looking to replace their job
The average US Salary is $53,490 per year. 

97,83% of all Optavia coaches aren’t earning the average full-time salary. 

According to the income disclaimer, the small percentage of Optavia coaches that got to this point took an average of 46 months (which is almost 4 years) to get there.

This means if you thought about earning a full-time income with Optavia it’d be wise to take a look at options for earning money.

Most people lose money
 63,27% have made less than $1.594 which is the minimal financial investment needed at the lowest rank. This means all these people have lost money. 

This doesn’t include the coaches (12,97%) that according to the income disclosure have made $1,000.01 - $2,500.00. A percentage of this group has also lost money.

I have a hard time calling this a business opportunity when looking at the numbers.

Why aren’t people earning decent money with MLM companies like Optavia?

I have summed up the reasons why it’s hard to make decent money with Optavia and MLM companies in general in 3 points. 

1. MLMs are often associated with pyramid schemes

MLMs have a pyramid recruiting structure that you often have to join to be able to make decent money or at the very least not lose money. The problem is a lot of pyramid schemes disguise themselves as MLM programs making it difficult to differentiate the two.

This is the biggest problem why most distributors have a difficult time recruiting people. The moment people hear about how you can make money by recruiting people red flags appear in most people’s minds.

2. You have to consistently invest money to earn decent commissions
The bigger the bonuses the more product you have to buy. and the more you have to recruit. You do get discounts but if you can’t sell the products I can see you easily fall into a financial deficit (which happens to the majority of MLMs).

3. The price of the product often isn’t aligned with the market

It’s hard for a multi-level marketer to sell products because most MLM products tend to be a lot more expensive than similar products sold by non-MLM companies.

This means even if you’re really good at recruiting your downline still needs to sell those same expensive products for you to make decent money.

You can see that translated in these statistics I found about Multi-level Marketing.

• Nearly half (47%) of MLM participants reported that they lost money.
• One in four (27%) MLM participants reported that they broke even (made no money).
• MLM participants are 7% more likely to declare bankruptcy during their lifetime.
• Direct sales have risen 79% in the last decade, but MLM participants continue to lose money.
• 90 – 99% of distributors in multilevel marketing only receive a couple of hundred dollars commission per year.
• Out of 33,000 interviewed, 90 people made enough money to cover the costs of building their business.
• 50% of the people who start a network marketing enterprise abandoned it in the first year.

Sources:
FTC
AARP
Jobsinmarketing.io

Is Optavia a pyramid scheme?

To answer this question we need to know what a pyramid scheme is.

What is a pyramid scheme?

A pyramid scheme is a type of scam where people are promised money for joining the scheme and recruiting other people. No selling of a product or service is involved whatsoever.

So you might be wondering where the money comes from?

The people that join are expected to pay a one-time fee and in exchange for that, they get a percentage of the fee of everyone they recruit after that.

The problem is from a mathematical standpoint it’s impossible for everyone to make money because you simply run out of people.

Take a look at this picture below showing how it’s impossible for everyone to earn money.

Source: Wikipedia

As you can see, in this pyramid model it’s required to recruit 6 people. You’ll notice from the 12th level and further, it’s not possible anymore for everyone to earn money.

The 2.2 Billion people on the 12th level need 13.1 billion recruits in total for them all to make money which is more people than there are currently on Earth.

Looking at the description of what a pyramid scheme is, the Optavia MLM program can’t be classified as a pyramid scheme from a legal perspective. 

That being said, there are pyramid schemes that disguise themselves as MLM companies because MLMs also use a pyramid structure but sell products and services. 

John M Taylor. a prominent figure in the research of MLM’s and Pyramid schemes calls these product-based pyramid schemes.

He came to the conclusion that this variant is a lot more dangerous than its predecessor.

A few examples of these can be found on the FTC website,  such as Vemma an  “MLM/Direct-selling company” that supposedly was selling liquid nutrition products but turned out to be a pyramid scheme.

Ultimately they settled and had to pay a fine of $238 million and were suspended from partaking in recruiting practices to distribute their products.

These pyramid schemes offer products that are almost impossible to sell with the goal of pushing you to recruit people because you supposedly can get higher commissions.

These pyramid schemes bring in money by the members paying for a membership and them purchasing products thinking they'll earn money in the long run.

In an investigation by the FTC regarding Amway, a precedent was set called the 70 percent rule.

They were accused of being a pyramid scheme. 

The 70 percent rule states that every distributor must sell at wholesale and/or retail at least 70% of the total amount of products he bought during a given month in order to receive the Performance Bonus due on all products bought. 

This was set in order to prevent distributors from purchasing their way to the top or placing orders themselves to stay eligible for commisions.

Pyramid Schemes earn money this way at the expense of the distributor.  

This is ofcourse hard to prove so most of the time to spot a pyramid scheme people look for red flags.

Here are some questions you should ask yourself when dealing with possible pyramid schemes.

1. Is there an endless chain of recruiters recruiting other recruiters?

A lot of bonuses are based on recruiting others but it’s mostly to get them to sell more products. 

There are some bonuses that reward you for getting them to ranks that require they have recruits but it isn’t the majority of them.

Is advancement achieved by recruitment rather than sales?

2. Do you have to “pay to play”?

Yes. 

It is literally impossible to start a coach without investing in a business kit of $199. 

After that, you also have minimum quotas every single month that require you to financially invest in their products.

Every time someone joins Optavia at least $199 flows into the company.

3. Does the company pay commissions and/or bonuses to more than five levels of “distributors?

Yes, the company pays commissions to 6 levels according to their compensation plan. According to articles on the FTC website, it’s hard to sustain an MLM with a compensation plan like that.

4. Are most people losing money?

When you take a deep dive into the compensation plan and the income disclosure, you’ll notice that most members lose money, especially in the first year. 

It’s hard to imagine anyone breaking even without putting in at least 5 years. The problem is most people quit somewhere between 13 and 19 months.

It does have a lot of red flags but because of most bonuses are geared towards personal and team sales I'm reluctant to call it a flat out pyramid scheme. 

However I have no problem calling it a terrible business opportunity.

So what about their parent company Medifast?

Medifast the parent company of Optaviawas founded in 1981. 

They also used the main plans of Optavia but they were for a different purpose. These plans were originally designed to be described by doctors to prepare people for surgery.

In 2012, Medifast had to pay a penalty of $7.3 million for false advertisements. They run ads that claimed that the 5 and 1 plan made it possible to lose 2 to 5 pounds a week. There was no scientific research that supported this claim.

That being said, the parent company of Optavia can’t be considered a pyramid scheme either when asking these questions.

My Personal Take

I don’t think Optavia is some sort of scam but I can’t consider it a great business opportunity.

I do respect the fact that Optavia has published their income disclosure so that people can have an idea of what they’re getting themselves into.

The majority of people currently working as independent coaches aren’t earning that much which I think greatly can be contributed to the price of the plans and the monthly quotas. 

I can’t imagine people happily buying these plans when you can find cheaper alternatives with a 5-minute Google search.

This in combination with the bad reputation of multi-level marketing has led me to believe that the only group that has a decent chance of succeeding are expert salesmen, recruiters, and people that already have an audience such as influencers.

Despite the price and the MLM reputation, Optavia has been very popular but I think I’d rather go with money-making methods that have been proven to be more successful.

Verdict

Is Optavia A Pyramid scheme? No. Optavia sells legitimate products and as a result, can’t be classified as a pyramid scheme.

Optavia Alternative: Earning Money Without Recruiting

Optavia can be a viable option for people to earn money but it takes a lot of face-to-face selling and recruiting. 

As someone that isn’t a fan of going up to people and trying to recruit people, I can imagine that for some people this might not be an ideal method for earning money.

This is why I’d like to introduce you to the method I use to earn money online.

It’s called affiliate marketing.

The only thing I do is create content with links in it that refer people to companies where they can buy products.

When someone that used my link buys something at that company I receive money.

I don’t need to recruit people, sell products, or buy expensive starter kits. I simply give recommendations.

Interested in learning how to turn giving simple recommendations into a full-time income? 

Take a look at my highest-rated recommendation for earning money online.

It’s a training platform that’ll teach you how to do affiliate marketing and turn it into a full-time passive income.

That’s all for today!

I hope my review was of value to you and helped you make a decision regarding Optavia.

If you have any questions leave a comment and I'll respond a.s.a.p.