4Life Review
Company Name: 4Life
Costs: $29.95
Rating: 32/100
What Is It
A health and wellness MLM that largely sells supplements and pills.
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Short Review
Even though 4Life has a big emphasis on the science behind its health products, there really isn’t that much evidence of it. Personally, I’m not even sure the products work, although I’m sure diehard associates would disagree with me.
Regardless of the products, 4Life is a fairly typical MLM, with a complex compensation plan that has you jumping for hoops to earn money. If you’re passionate about their products and have good selling skills, it might be an okay choice, but for most people, there are many better options out there.
Product Breakdown
4Life offers a wide range of products, all with a focus on health and wellness. Most of these are various types of pills and supplements, although there are some other products also, such as protein shakes, tea and (for some reason) pet health products.
As you might expect, most of the products are on the expensive side. For example, around 1lb of protein shake mix costs $38.45 and the price of pills varies widely.
Many of the company’s products are being sold on Amazon. Some of them have a decent number of reviews, which suggests that they are at least partially popular (although some reviews are probably distributors themselves).
For supplements, the reviews tend to be pretty good, like the rating below for the Tri Factor Formula from the company.
Normally a distribution like this suggests that many reviewers are happy with the product. If distributors were manipulating the ratings, you would see many 5-star reviews and many 1-star reviews.
Honestly though, reviews for supplements really aren’t that useful. With very few exceptions, you won’t notice much of a difference when you take a supplement compared to when you don’t.
Exceptions to this rule would be cases where you were actually nutrient deficient. For example, if you were deficient in vitamin D or iron and started to supplement them, the difference can be quite large. This doesn’t normally apply to multivitamins or the complex supplements that 4Life offers. “Just feeling better” has placebo written all over it.
If the supplement is effective, people might see very small impacts, like getting sick slightly less often or having a little bit more energy. However, these changes are almost impossible to detect with large sample sizes and detailed tracking. At the same time, people tend to convince themselves that they see changes, even when they don’t actually.
In general, this means that most reviews of supplements will be positive, regardless of whether the vitamin actually works or not. This makes it hard to know whether the products from the company actually do what they are supposed to or not.
I can see the same effect on myself! I started taking fish oil, multivitamins, and “concentration” supplements this year at various points. All seemed to have an effect, but not enough of an effect that I could tell if they really worked. In the end, I stopped taking all of them because they were just another expense and didn’t produce obvious results.
The Science Behind The Products
Many of the products from 4Life are specifically designed to improve health in some way. This includes areas like heart health, eye health, digestive health and weight management. Because of this, a critical thing about the company is whether the products actually work.
The site does employ a team of researchers and scientists, which is a step that many similar companies don’t both taking. Of course, having a scientific team doesn’t actually mean that the team is any good.
For me, one concerning part is the studies and patents page on the site. This should be a place to highlight the studies the company has conducted. Instead, only two specific studies are discussed. One is highlighted as a preliminary test and the other is just called a test.
Using that terminology suggests that neither of those were actual scientific studies, which undermines their validity. Additionally, the site gives no links to the actual scientific studies it has commissioned, making it hard to know whether they are even relevant. Remember – none of these pills are regulated by the FDA!
Also, the information given on the scientific part of the site largely focuses on the immune system and a couple of very specific approaches, including Targeted Transfer Factor and nanofraction molecules.
Whether these approaches are actually any good remains to be seen. However, there certainly isn’t much in the way of scientific evidence supporting them. That’s concerning when the company hypes up the scientific support for its products so much.
Overall, there is a chance that the products from the company work as claimed, but it’s more likely that they don’t. With the high price tag of most products, the lack of scientific backing makes the products a hard sell to people that care about facts, as opposed to hype.
Opportunity Breakdown
The opportunity is where it’s all at. There are some encouraging things about the opportunity with this company. For one, the site has a separate section that gives more information about the direct selling approach and some (but not all) of the challenges involved. This is more information than many companies provide.
A second encouraging thing is that the company has scored an A+ BBB rating. Additionally, there have only been 3 closed complaints through the BBB in the last month. This doesn’t mean a whole lot, because most people with issues don’t go to the BBB. However, it is some indication of the quality of the opportunity, because scam companies tend to have more complaints and often have a lower rating.
Compensation Plan
As tends to be the case, the compensation plan for the company is based on two factors. One is the product you directly sell to customers, the other is the people that you recruit into the company (and by extension, the success of those people).
While it is possible to make money just by selling products, this tends to be challenging to achieve in practice. Instead, the most effective way for members to make money is through recruitment – which is also much more difficult. Have you ever pitched a “biz op” to someone? It sucks. I’ve tried it once or twice, and never did it again. Most people are skeptical and disinterested, and you come off looking like a shady vacuum cleaner salesman.
The basic structure of recruitment looks like the image below, where you recruit people who then recruit others and so forth. You and the people you recruit will be aiming to recruit others and also to get customers simply buying the product.
The company offers bonuses for progressing through the ranks of the plan. Doing this involves meeting certain requirements. For example, the image below shows the qualifications for the first four ranks of the company (there are another three after that).
As you go up in the ranks, your potential to earn money increases. However, the complexity of the requirements also increases. For example, getting to the second rank involves ordering 100 LP (I’ll explain this in a minute) personally each month through autoship. You also have to recruit at least four people, who also order at least that much each month.
Having a structure like this also means that if people you recruit drop out or decrease what they are spending, it can dramatically decrease your own potential to make money and your rank. Some people also find it difficult to keep track of what they are supposed to be doing.
LP is also an interesting (and frustrating) approach. The acronym stands for Life Points, and it refers to how much product you are ordering, or is being ordered through the people you recruit. Regardless of the size of your business, you still have to order either 50 or 100 LP every month.
A lot of MLMs use this approach.
By using a points system, the company can present nice, easy, round numbers in their plans. More importantly, the approach makes how much money people need to spend less visible.
For example, the supplements I discussed before that were $61.45 have a LP of exactly 50. Other products vary, but in general, you would need to spend around $60 per month in the first rank of the company and $120 in any subsequent rank.
That’s quite a bit of money every month, especially if you have hard time selling products. Additionally, the people you recruit have to meet this volume also, which is another challenge.
Making Money. Is It Realistic?
Companies like this are appealing, because their model looks so good on paper. There are so many different bonuses along the way and it almost seems like it would be difficult to not earn money. Despite all the bonuses, making money with a MLM can be challenging.
For starters, it’s a network marketing approach. This means that you have to talk to and connect with people to make sales and to recruit. The personal nature can seem appealing, but it is also challenging. Realistically, selling in person can be difficult for people who are trained and skilled in the field, and it is much more challenging for someone with no real experience.
You may have your own personal connections to leverage, like friends and family, but sooner or later you will have to seek out more customers.
There are other challenges too. For example, you are competing against everyone selling for the company and against similar products from other companies. This is particular problematic nowadays, because so many people go online to buy products. In fact, 4Life’s products on Amazon are often less expensive than distributors sell them for, like this:
Likewise, your success also depends on how successful your team is. Often this means you have to spend a lot of time handholding and making sure your team members are successful. That’s a lot of extra work.
Other Comments
This model for making money creates far more challenges than it should. You are taking an overpriced product (that might or might not work), finding people and then trying to convince them to buy it. At the same time, you are trying to recruit people into the company. You are also spending your own money each month to buy products that you might not even want.
MLM VS Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an alternative approach for making money and it’s a lot simpler. For one thing, it is an online approach. You also aren’t trying to pitch a product that people aren’t really interested in. Instead, you use the internet to draw interested people to your site and the site becomes a sales tool.
You get to pick what you promote, so you can sell things that you are passionate about and that other people are actually going to want. You don’t have to recruit, you don’t have to buy stock, and you don’t have to train anyone to sell anything (like with team building in MLM)
Instead, you end up with an online business that you can grow over time and profit directly from your own efforts.
Final Review
MLM Critic & Author: Nathaniell
What's up ladies and dudes! Great to finally meet you, and I hope you enjoyed this post. I have to be honest though. I'm not a big fan of MLM. Tried it. Hated it.
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Nidzam
The only people who don’t get involved in Network Marketing are people who don’t understand it.
Nathaniell
That is false.
Paul
Just met with a couples guys MLM . Simply put an illusion . Rather buy my products at Walmart , after all it’s what it’s all about selling products.
Nathaniell
Pretty much. Almost anything you get with MLM you can get at a normal store, and you don’t need a membership and they charge normal prices.
Steve Smith
Your review is quite unfair and the arguments you present to support your position are equally as unfair and here’s why:
1. By definition, a pyramid scheme needs to have the distributors sell a product. In this company, you don’t sell anything, you consume. Sure you can make a commission by recruiting people, but the real incentive is the consumption of the products by your organization
2. Speaking of the product, there is a science behind it. Congratulations, you took a screenshot of the caption from the company site. For one, the physicians hand desk and the science behind the transfer factor molecule does exist so research is important
3. Again speaking of the product being a supplement not controlled by the FDA..the FDA isn’t the ultimatum for what’s right and wrong. Just because the government says something is okay or not okay doesn’t make it so. There are many home remedies that do the trick and the FDA hasn’t stuck their nose in. This is something similar. There are multiple testimonies for the product that have them say it worked and sure that sounds fallacious inherently but again regulation by the government doesn’t make something purely gold or to even be trusted in the first place
4. Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone, so this company isn’t a get rich quick scheme. You tailored your argument in a way that says “if you can’t do this then you’re screwed already”. If you can’t learn to do something then of course you’re screwed, but you forgot to mention the FREE training provided by subdivisions within the company (international networkers team, the warriors) providing real knowledge to people to how to do this type of work and meet people
5. People can sign up as consumers and not pay a cent and just take the product if they want, so that doesn’t entail a high start up fee like another MLM company so that point about a high investment cost is invalid (40 bucks is the investment cost plus your 100LP a month which is usually no more than 114 dollars a month)
6. The company doesn’t sell anything, so there is no “brand restriction” and even if there was, you don’t see Walmart rocking any target merchandise.
7. There is no marketing with unrealistic expectations. If you would’ve reviewed the business plan set by the INT you would know that this isn’t a get rich quick scheme
Conclusion: This isn’t an honest review because it’s going in with a deceptive way of thinking towards MLM albeit due to other companies giving this business practice a bad name. You didn’t try the product and your argument for not enough science and hard work being too hard is fallacious. I think you should really try the product yourself to see its benefits and do more research on the transfer factor molecule
Nathaniell
1. Nope. MLMs have products. Pyramids don’t have products. You can have a “pyramid style MLM”, though it’s an unofficial term, where there are products but they are a veil to the true money making aspect of the business which is recruiting. RECRUITING makes the pyramid.
2. What?
3. The FDA is an unbiased source with checks and balances. No, it’s not perfect. Yes, there are home remedies that work well too! I just mean that you can’t believe everything in the health industry because there’s a lot of misinformation out there with nothing to back up or refute claims. Don’t believe everything you read!
4. Fair point, but if you can’t recruit, you are screwed.
5. Fair point
6. Doesn’t sell anything? Um, they why are they selling stuff on their website. A company has to sell something to make money. The point I’m making is that as a distributor, you may be restricted from promoting other products side by side for honest comparison. I’m just talking about the freedom of promoting the truly best thing, rather than just the best of what 4Life offers.
7. That’s your opinion. I wrote my opinion in this article.
Conclusion: Just because I have a different opinion than you doesn’t make my review unfair or dishonest.
WM Ng
If you haven’t tried it yet, you won’t know whether it works for you. It would be a lot more respectful of your response to critics without statements of ‘the placebo is happening to YOU’
Nathaniell
Whether or not it was respectful, the point still stands that nothing was scientifically proven. There’s too much room for error to actually recommend this based on the anecdote of one person, one time.
Linda Lopez
The first thing I would have to ask you about this review is- did you actually try this product? Because if you didn’t it seems pretty irresponsible to say it just gives a placebo effect! Transfer Factor itself is not a vitamin. The product is meant to educate and improve the body’s immune system. I’ve been giving it to my dog (yes it can be given to animals too) since May because she has Lymphoma and was given a poor prognosis. Since we had to stop chemo because of the expense and the anxiety it was causing in her, she has been on Transfer Factor 9 capsules a day, cheaper than chemo. While it will not cure her cancer, it is at least improving her energy and quality of life! So I personally don’t see it as “placebo” when she was sleeping more and being lethargic before the supplements and she is now showing a more normal energy level. I was told by 2 different vets to expect her to succumb withing 1 to 3 months, we are now at the 3 month mark and she appears to still be holding her own.
Nathaniell
I won’t pretend to know exactly what’s happening to your dog, but maybe the placebo is happening to YOU. Because you’re giving her the pills and want to see results, you’re projecting your feelings on the dog. “more energy” is subjective. Without scientific proof and controls, it’s just another willy-nilly supplement not controlled by the FDA.