Ken Crawford

Your company, Weight Loss Partners, is not a 'product' company in the area of weight loss. You are a coaching/accountability company. Could you tell us how you got started Ken? Sure, the origin of Weight Loss Partners really goes back to when I was in my twenties working as a fitness instructor. I would have a lot of people come into the gym and ask me what my schedule looked like. Understand I was a fitness instructor before there were such things as personal trainers. So I would ask what they were looking for from me and they would comment on my willingness to hold their feet to the flame and hold them accountable and that kind of thing.

Then over time I noticed that people who join fitness classes and gyms or start diets together seemed to benefit from joining with other people.

When I peeled back the layers and explored this I realized people were aware that they needed somebody, a partner, to keep them in the game.

I think that's why personal training has become so popular; because people want to know that someone is going to be there for them to help them reach their goals.

It serves us to know someone is willing to be there with us through thick and thin. And that's what really got me started on the idea of Weight Loss Partners.

So how do you tie into your clients? What are some of the things you are doing that is unique to the weight loss community? Well, here's an example. Think of a television commercial you may have seen with a well known celebrity talking about a weight loss plan. They always have that person with them who stuck with them in the trenches, who was a coach, a support. When you start to look at it you realize that having a support system is a key component to being successful at losing and maintaining weight.

The problem for most people is that it's priced so high that they can't afford it. There are programs that exist today where you can get a 'Wellness Coach' but you're going to pay anywhere from $150 a month up to $950 for one month! Obviously that's going to out price many people who really need and want help.

What we did was give thought to how we could provide that price point, where we could offer that consultant who would work with you, and make it affordable to those who wanted to lose weight.

Additionally, what we found when people go through that process of losing weight, is that it's a little bit easier when you do it in a group setting as opposed to trying to do it all by yourself. I'll give you an example – there is a television show called The Biggest Loser. It's a reality show that starts out with two teams of people.

The two teams are competing with one another and what happens with that dynamic is that the focus really gets off of losing weight.

It's put more on the camaraderie, the competition and having fun with the different relationships. As a result people end up losing weight. They are locked, kind of arm-in-arm in that process of achievement.

That's one of the dynamics that comes into place with Weight Loss Partners because we put you into a team setting and we put you with a partner coach. And by the way, our coaches are personal trainers or fitness instructors or nutritionists or dieticians. So we put you in that kind of environment that gives you the beginning formula to succeed.

I hear the statistics, Ken, that say 95% of all diets fail so tell us more about how your program changes those numbers. And what do your statistics show about the success of Weight Loss Partners? Well here's what we know… the statistics say 95% of all diets fail but if you look back and really look into that you realize that 95% of all people who go on diets fail to stay on them.

You know, it's the person who makes the New Year's Resolution to start a diet. They start and the diet really works for them. I know that from my own experience in the past. I started a diet, worked the program, lost weight and then dropped off. And what happens when you drop off is that the diet stops working! So we really need to change how we say that.

It's not that 95% of the diets fail; it's that 95% of the people fail to stay on the diet.

To borrow a phrase from Dr. Phil, one that I just love, "You can't change what you don't acknowledge." So one of the first things people have to be willing to admit is "I am a foodaholic". It's okay to admit that we love food. If you're one of those people who might be driving down 'restaurant alley' having no intention to eat right now, but you get attracted to the great smell of food and suddenly find yourself sitting at the drive-thru window you might benefit from admitting that you have a problem with food.

At Weight Loss Partners we believe that a once a week meeting isn't really enough to get you through. And why is that? Because food engages us all the time, every day! It's an on-going process that doesn't fight fair.

So we decided to incorporate three weekly conference calls that are 15-20 minutes each with your coach and with your teammates.

Now, when people first hear 'three times weekly' they might feel overwhelmed. Something we hear is "I don't have time." This is my response to that – today 'time' seems like the new status gauge. Today when people ask, "What have you been doing?" we don't hear answers like, "Oh, sitting around the pool eating bonbons." That's not a response that indicates success today, it's more like people are trying to 'out busy' one another to prove their importance. So I say, yes, we're all busy… let's acknowledge and accept that and let's look at your health. And let's talk about some of your dreams and goals around losing weight. When we start talking about that then I point out that if they really want those results they are going to have to start making themselves a priority. If that means making three calls a week for 15-20 minutes guess what? Your health is worth it!

We have the calls set up Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at the same time with the same people each of those days. The thing about it though is the reason that we do this… because food doesn't fight fair.

Take guys at the office who all go out to the lunch buffet on Fridays. I understand that there are many women who can look at a buffet and think, "What a great value and solution for the family. With all the choices everyone will find something to enjoy." But I think many guys look at a buffet and think not only, "Oh man, I'm going to get my money's worth!" but today, many guys think, "Oh… I'm going to make the guy sorry for opening up this place!" Now, with these three calls a week, I'm not telling you not to go to the buffet. I am suggesting that maybe you'll eat a little more sensibly because you've just had your weight loss call. Or maybe you'll include a workout over the weekend, which you normally wouldn't have done, because you know you have another call coming up on Monday.

So, we acknowledge the fact that we are foodaholic and that this is an on-going process. Another thing that makes us different is that although we don't follow a particular diet, what we do is say, "Let's come to a realization that the true crushed to the Earth shall rise again!" In other words, you have to acknowledge what you do and do not know. When someone logs in they can go to their journal page and enter in the foods that they eat for each meal and the associated calories.

Let's say, for example, for breakfast you're going to have oatmeal. So you type in 'oatmeal' and it's going to ask you how much oatmeal. You might list ½ cup of oatmeal. The calories that are associated with that meal will show on your journal page. In addition to that we give you a heart rate monitor/calorie counter wristwatch. That will tell you how many calories you burn throughout the day so that at the end of the day you know how many calories you've eaten and you can look at your heart rate monitor/calorie counter wristwatch and it will tell you how many calories you've burned.

These tools simply tell you what's true. So if at the end of the day you end up with a surplus of calories, guess what? You're gaining weight. If you end the day with a deficit you're losing weight.

Boy, that's a great concept; calories in and calories out! Here at The Network Marketing Magazine we, obviously, are bound to have subscribers that could lose 10, 15, 60… 100 pounds, it runs the gamut because we're not any different than the national statistic. However, a large group of our subscribers represent companies that offer, as part of their product line, a weight loss product or products. What I like about Weight Loss Partners is that you're not in competition with any of these companies. You are really in partnership. How does a person integrate their product with your program? Typically what we do find is that when people start the program it's not long before they begin to ask what else we have to offer that could help them on their weight loss/weight management journey. That certainly allows the opportunity for that Independent Distributor to offer those products to the end-user using our program. And that's going to be repeat sales because what happens is that when people start to lose weight they realize it's a result of their disciplined effort combined with our program helping keep them accountable and motivated and the products they have access to through that network marketing company.

It's a very cyclical program in terms of creating on-going sales and on-going benefits to that distributor.

So Weight Loss Partners actually is very congruent with having a network marketing company do their thing. Absolutely!

One of the things we hope to do is provide an environment where that network marketing distributor can become profitable early on in their network marketing career and stay profitable with increased profits on-going.

We are absolutely here to complement and hopefully be a conduit that can help them promote their business.

There will be a lot of things that we will do in the future that will be a more public type of branding that will allow the name Weight Loss Partners to become more known throughout various communities and we certainly hope at least some will piggyback on that name to grow their network marketing business in addition to their product sales.

This brings up a question for me around how you currently create your teams. Do you form teams where people are interested in using the same product? As far as the teams are concerned – on an individual basis if someone was to register with us and they had a team they could certainly register their team all at the same time.

For example, we have a group of people who all work together at a state institution and they all take a break at 10 am. Those folks all registered at the same time and have the same coach and are all on a team call together. So we can certainly accommodate that kind of situation.

Also, if a person is with a particular network marketing company, we would ask that they get in touch with their leadership there at their company, tell them about who we are and what we have to offer and put us in touch with them or vice versa, and we would go from there.

Please say more about how you feel Weight Loss Partners can benefit the network marketing industry. Well, I am a marketing major myself and when I graduated from college and started to get a closer look at the network marketing business I was absolutely amazed that there was nothing taught about this in college.

Weight Loss Partners was started partly out of frustration. What I mean by that is that I really grew kind of tired of hearing about all of the various 'wellness initiatives', 'healthy lifestyle initiatives', all of these programs that were coming out to address things like childhood obesity, but they really had no action oriented plan. This was extremely frustrating to me. I would continue to see this over and over and over again until I finally said, "You know what? I think I've had enough of this!" One of the reasons I kind of hesitated in moving forward with this was because although I had been a fitness instructor, I had gotten married, my wife got pregnant and I gained weight right along with her. She lost hers and I must have decided to keep mine so I realized that if I was going to start a wellness company then I was going to have to get off my own 'rusty dusty' and take action! This meant I had to start jogging and start exercising, getting back to the gym, eating right and all of those actions we can take.

I've obviously since done that and what is really interesting is this… My wife and I have twin boys. They are not identical and one of our sons is overweight. Just from seeing his mom and I working out and changing our eating habits, he took the initiative on his own to start watching what he ate and to start exercising. That little guy dropped 25 pounds on his own initiative! To me that's how you address childhood obesity.

It's not about all the programs or anything like that. It's about parents setting the right example, getting active, putting the right kinds of food into their children's lives and then childhood obesity will be removed.

So that's actually how Weight Loss Partners actually got started. As far as the network marketing industry is concerned we see that there is a true opportunity to make a difference. Someone once asked me, "Ken, how long is someone on Weight Loss Partners?" and my question back to them was, "How long do you want to live?" When you talk about a healthy lifestyle you don't talk about a healthy lifestyle just for bikini season despite what the ads show you. No!

This is a LIFESTYLE. If it's going to be a lifestyle you do it for life!

Is food going to become less appealing ten years from now? No. We will still have the Food Network and restaurants and commercials that will entice you and seduce you and the next thing you know you're sitting in front of a plate of food that you probably shouldn't eat. Those things are not going away anytime soon, therefore this is an on-going battle.

That's the key, isn't it? Lifestyle is an ongoing thing and your program is a key to helping people make the right decisions in an ongoing way. Yes, and to further address the question as to how we can impact the industry; we are a company that's involved with motivation and accountability as pertains to weight loss and weight management, that's what we do. One of our goals is to help penetrate that market but by the same token stay true to who we are, and we are a company that practices tough love but with compassion.

It's very important to us that our members, who have struggled with these weight issues for years, need to know that we care about them. They need to know that we are concerned about their health. In fact, that's another of our little tag lines that we say, "It's not about your weight, it's about your health." In order for that to happen they need to know that we're there for them, that we care about them and that we care about their future and getting healthier. Now honestly, we didn't feel like we could give a concerted effort towards creating the sales side of this program.

We know that there is no more effective model for getting the word out than network marketing and at the same time we can help those distributors become more profitable quickly and for a longer period of time while reaching some of their dreams and goals.

That's one of the reasons The Network Marketing Magazine is really excited about teaming up with you! We don't feel this is in any competition with any of the great companies we end up partnering with and it's very much in keeping with our core desires of increased sales of products and services, growing bigger, more productive teams and retaining team members for life. We can see how teaming up with Weight Loss Partners around those three core desires is a great fit! Thank you! The whole program is really designed to benefit the individual and I think that's where network marketing is so key because that's all about those individual dreams and those individual goals especially as it pertains to the persons family.

It's interesting because when we sat down with folks one of the comparisons that invariably come up between what we do and what network marketing does is one simple thing, and that is it's about emotion.

People have the dream of living a better lifestyle and being debt free and all of those things tied to personal and financial freedom.

We also know that weight is a very restrictive thing. We talk with folks about the reasons why they want to lose weight, in fact, that's one of the very things we do when we give a health assessment. We help people explore the 'vanity' reasons, like losing weight for a class reunion or wanting to fit into an old pair of jeans, and then we also ask them to explore their health reasons for wanting to lose weight. After that we explore the family reasons and that's when we really start to hear the true emotion behind why people want to succeed with our program. And all of that goes right back to something I mentioned earlier; we want people to know we care and I think it's that caring and connection that relates directly back to their hopes and their dreams.

Some people ask us why we do conference calls rather than online chat rooms or message boards and the reason is, next to being in front of someone face to face, there is a little bit of body language that you can hear in a person's voice. I hope that you can hear the passion that I have for Weight Loss Partners in my voice right now. That really can't be duplicated in a chat room or on a message board.

There is a real power that exists in hearing words and we want to be sure that that gets communicated to our membership.

Sure, that, too, comes back to network marketing in that it's all about relationships. When you start to slip, and all of us do, it's the relationship with a coach or mentor that can pull you through. Thank you, Ken, I think this is an extremely synergistic relationship we have that will serve many well! And my thanks to you and The Network Marketing Magazine!

As someone who has been athletic yet struggled with weight management his entire life Ken Crawford knows first hand the issues of weight loss. His passion for helping those who share this struggle can be heard in his words. Ken's experience is life long, his involvement is consistent, and his skill to motivate is pure. If you have had or know of someone who has had a challenge in getting motivated or staying motivated to lose weight then you have found the person who can help you now and into the future.