Have you seen the business opportunity for Willing Beauty and now you’re wondering if it’s a scam? Or a pyramid scheme? I’m going to help you answer those questions below and I’ll also show you the different ranks and see if you can make money with this multi-level marketing (MLM) company.
Something is interesting about this one.
Kids are encouraged to join.
Is this a good thing that empowers them?
Let’s dive in and talk about it all.
What is Willing Beauty?
Willing Beauty is an MLM company that launched in April 2017 by Bella and Chrissy Weems and Willa Doss and Christy Prunier. (Both pairs of founders are mother and daughter teams.) Bella and Chrissy also founded Origami Owl, and Will and Christy founded Willa skincare.
Willing Beauty sells skincare products, and they have anti-aging lines as well as anti-acne lines for teens. Some of their products include:
- Foaming face wash
- Acne spot treatment
- Lip gloss
- Age-defying night serum
Products range from $12 (for a tube of lip gloss) to $170 for a set of HY+5 regimen.
How Much Does it Cost to Join Willing Beauty?
There are a few options to join Willing Beauty.
1. Digital Bundle = $49
You’ll get $49 in product credit, access to the back office, personal web page (2 months free), product discount and the ability to earn as a Beauty Advocate.
2. Get Going Enrollment Set = $128
This set gives you 7 products, a tote and a 10-pack of brand booklets.
3. Best of Both Worlds Enrollment Set = $196
This set gives you 13 products (some anti-aging and some clear skin), a tote and a 10-pack of brand booklets.
4. The Works Enrollment Set = $248
This set gives you 18 products (including an anti-aging pack, a clear skin pack and an “essentials” pack), a tote and a 10-pack of brand booklets.
You’ll also have to pay for tax and shipping. If you decide to become a Beauty Advocate, there will be additional PV (personal volume) goals you’ll need to hit to stay active and to rank up. These can be from sales that you make to others or your own personal sales.
I like to mention it here because I know from personal experience that many independent distributors end up buying products themselves in order to stay active. That can eat into any profits you may make.
Willing Beauty Compensation Plan
There are 15 ranks in the Willing Beauty compensation plan, broken into 5 phases:
1. Beauty Advisors
- Beauty Advisor
- Senior Beauty Advisor
- Executive Beauty Advisor
2. Team Leaders
- Team Leader
- Senior Team Leader
- Executive Team Leader
3. Team Managers
- Team Manager
- Senior Team Manager
- Executive Team Manager
4. Directors
- Director
- Senior Director
- Executive Director
5. Field Vice Presidents
- Field Vice President
- Senior Field Vice President
- Executive Field Vice President
You can earn from 25% – 30% sales commissions from products. The amount of PV you need each month is dependent on your rank. The compensation plan is listed here if you want to take a closer look.
Willing Beauty Income Disclosure
I couldn’t find an income disclosure for Willing Beauty, but we can take a look at the one from Origami Owl to get a good idea of what’s probably going on here.
In the Origami Owl disclosure, we learned that these are the average annual income for each of the sets of ranks:
- Designers: $82.22
- Team Leaders: $2,962.08
- Team Managers: $17,920.04
- Directors & Field Vice Presidents: $105,308.15
So, the only way to really earn a good income that can support a household is to become somewhere in between a Director and an Executive Field Vice President (and I have a feeling Directors don’t do all that well).
And if you did, you’d be there with the other 0.07% of advisors.
Yikes!
It’s not looking good.
Willing Beauty Complaints & Positive Reviews
Since Willing Beauty is new and they don’t seem to have picked up a lot of steam at this time, there aren’t a lot of positive reviews or complaints yet.
I did see a few positive reviews and they said things like:
- I love that they don’t test on animals and are cruelty free
- The products are great and they work
- I love the company’s mission and business model
I didn’t see any complaints about Willing Beauty except that there are some anti-MLM people who are against the fact that this company allows kids ages 11-17 to sign up so that they can become “entrepreneurs”. (Of course, their parents would sign this contract, not the kids themselves.)
The kids that sign up are called a willagirl/willaguy. Signing kids up for this just seems like a bad idea, unless you want to teach them the lesson of how to deal with failure since over 99% of people lose money in an MLM. Source.
These kids (or anyone who signs up for an MLM) are NOT entrepreneurs. They do not own the business. At best, they are independent sales people for the parent company. In actuality, they are customers for the people at the top of the pyramid.
Here’s something I saw someone wrote in a review:
While I agree that girls empowering girls is a positive message, it’s used more of a manipulation tactic to get women to sign up for these awful businesses more than anything. And now we’re going to drag young girls into this?
Not feelin’ it.
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Is Willing Beauty a Scam or a Pyramid Scheme?
Even though I don’t like the way that MLMs are structured, I wouldn’t say that Willing Beauty is a scam or a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are illegal and they don’t generally have a product to sell. It always gets interesting though because any time that you can make more money by recruiting people than by selling the product, it starts to be right on that border of being a pyramid scheme. And most MLMs are right there.
Pros
- Small start-up cost
- Products seem to get positive reviews so far
Cons
- Products are overpriced and therefore will likely be hard to sell retail
- Only the very top few people make a full-time income in this business
- MLMs are extremely hard to work (see the Dave Ramsey video below)
- Bringing kids into an MLM is probably not a good idea and will set them up for failure
I’m sure the women who started Willing Beauty are nice people. I can imagine that they really believe they are empowering girls by helping them start their own businesses. But if they took a look at the statistics and the realities of being in an MLM, I think they would see the other side.
Many people, especially women, have been hurt financially, spiritually and emotionally by these businesses. They’re not empowering. They’re damaging.
You get told a lie that you can work an MLM in your spare time while being at home. Not true. I like the way that Dave explains this business.
And then we feel like failures.
An Alternative to Willing Beauty
If you have the desire to work your own business on your own time from home, then I have an alternative to Willing Beauty. It’s called affiliate marketing. Affiliate marketing is where you promote someone else’s product for a commission.
If you like beauty products, you can create a beauty website and join beauty affiliate programs (for free) and promote their products on your site. When someone buys from your site, you earn a commission!
You could easily sign up for Amazon’s affiliate program, and promote any of it’s 200,000,000 + products. Here are some in the anti-aging category:
Then you don’t need to worry about:
- Recruiting
- Training
- Uplines or downlines
- Inventory
- Minimum monthly sales
Many people love the idea of MLMs because it seems like an easy job that you can do from home. Meanwhile, it’s much harder than it appears and they get crushed by monthly sales minimums that they usually end up buying themselves.
You don’t have any of that with affiliate marketing. In fact, let me explain it more to you here.
Conclusion
Is Willing Beauty a scam? No, in my opinion, it’s not a scam and it’s not an illegal pyramid scheme since they have products to sell. However, like with most MLMs, the products that are getting sold are almost all from people at the bottom of the pyramid. That’s just how they work.
I also have an issue with this one allowing kids to sign up and then saying it “empowers” them. MLMs don’t empower anyone because of their structure and their high failure rate. I’m not buying it, and I don’t think it’s a great idea to bring kids into it.
If you want a real way to earn an income online, I would suggest affiliate marketing instead. You don’t need to buy any products, and there aren’t any uplines. Get more information here.