Avant: Brent Payne’s New Avant Income Opportunity Is True To His Roots

Avant, which is the latest income opportunity from Brent Payne announced its prelaunch on May 17, 2010. Because of my familiarity with Brent and Liberty League, I have had several people ask me for my opinion about Avant. Given the interest, I figure the time is right to document my thoughts for anyone who cares to hear them. I’ve attempted to be thorough, so this will be quite lengthy.

Avant Income Opportunity Review

Let me begin by saying that I have nothing bad to say about Brent Payne. As you may know, I spent nearly 5 years with Liberty League and in that time got to meet with and know Brent as both a person and as a business leader. In my dealings with Brent, I found him to be very personable, likable, and a refreshingly straight up guy.

If you are not familiar with Liberty League International, Brent was one of the two co-founders of the company which had a pretty successful 8 year or so run as a top tier direct sales opportunity. The company ran into regulatory trouble, Brent subseqently left the company to pursue other interests, and the company ultimately relaunched itself last year as Polaris Media Group (now Polaris Global).

It comes as no surprise to me to see that Brent is now launching his own company and that, as was the case with Liberty League, his new company is once again firmly grounded in the personal development space. Based on what I have seen so far, Brent is staying very true to his Liberty League roots with Avant — both in terms of the product line and in terms of the compensation model.

This review of the Avant income opportunity represents my personal opinion based on my prior experience with Brent Payne and Liberty League International. Don’t accept anything I say as fact, but instead take the time to perform your own due diligence on any company before you choose to get started.

Avant Product Line

Let’s begin with a review of the Avant product line.

Like Liberty League, Avant offers three basic products. Liberty League offered a home study program called Beyond Freedom, a three day event called the Liberty conference, and a five day event called the Summit conference.

In the case of Avant, the products include a home study program called the Elevate Life Achievement Course, a three day live event called Transform, and a four day live event called Transcend.

Whereas Liberty League’s Beyond Freedom program was a 90 home study course, Elevate is a 72 day home study program consisting of a DVD, 3 CDs, workbook and journaling system. The company is integrating coaching calls, social media and an online component to enhance the product experience. Unlike Liberty League, which only offered the minimum right to rescission policy required by law, Avant offers a full 72 day money back guarantee on its Elevate program. The program’s retail price is $1595.

Transform is a three day conference that sounds strikingly similar to Liberty League’s former Liberty conference. It is a three day event that allows for the coming together of the community at a resort location with the opportunity to network and to plug into guest speaker presentations. The event ticket is for 2 people and includes conference admission, opening night dinner reception, closing night black tie dinner, and hotel accommodation. The event ticket is $9495.

Transcend is a four day conference very similar in design to Liberty League’s former Summit conference. It is designed to build on the foundational principles taught within Elevate and Transform and includes live speaker presentations and participation in physical challenges and break-out groups. The event ticket is for 2 people and includes conference admission, opening night dinner reception, closing night black tie dinner celebration, and hotel accommodation. The event ticket is $16495.

Avant Compensation Model

The Avant compensation plan pays qualified distributors (referred to as “advisors”) in two different ways: retail profits on all sales you personally make; and residual override payments on all sales made within your down-line organization, up to 4 levels deep.

To become a qualified advisor at each product level, you must first make one retail sale — which can include your own personal purchase (at retail) from your advisor. After that qualifying sale, all subsequent sales pay you directly. Avant’s retail product prices include profits of $1,000 (Elevate), $5,000 (Transform), and $10,000 (Transcend) to the qualified distributor.

As was the case with Liberty League, customers purchase the products directly from you as the advisor (distributor) and you then remit the wholesale payment to the company to complete the order. This allows the company to avoid the high cost of building a complex compensation system and being forced into a weekly or perhaps even daily compensation cycle. It also provides a structure whereby the company is technically not paying you commissions and instead positions you as a qualified reseller.

A key distinction from the Liberty League model is the introduction of the residual override pool. The residual override pool pays overrides to you on all sales within your down-line (up to 4 levels deep). The override amounts are $50 for Elevate, $250 for Transform, and $500 for Transcend. This creates the very real possibility of building a residual income base which also creates stronger incentive to build and support your team.

Additional Fees

To become a distributor requires a one-time fee of $29.95. In addition, there is a monthly fee of $29.95 which includes access to your virtual office and personalized company website.

Regulatory Considerations

Avant has avoided use of the 2-up compensation model that was part of the original Liberty League model and which initially made them such an easy target for regulators. However that does not mean they’re off the hook.

In my opinion, the single biggest challenge with this business model is the fact that most customers will not repurchase. Sustainable, long term business growth comes from building a loyal customer base which happily repurchases products over time; this is the only way in which businesses survive and prosper over the long haul.

The question becomes: are home study courses and conferences truly consumable products that customers will continue to repurchase? Historically, the answer is no.

People will pay significant money for personal development events without an income opportunity attached — the success of people such as Tony Robbins and Bob Proctor or organizations such as Peak Potentials proves this. However, those events are generally built around highly recognizable speakers with a significant “celebrity” status. Even then, the repeat customer base is decidedly modest.

The price point of the products is such that the vast majority of customers are distributors wishing to qualify themselves for the compensation plan. This creates real questions about the retail viability of the products. Historically for such products, where there no income opportunity attached most people are unwilling to pay the price for the products.

This has generally been the case for all of the so-called top tier opportunities. This creates tremendous pressure to continually recruit new distributors in order to maintain the viability of the income model. The absence of a legitimate retail customer base — and consider there is significant movement within the industry towards a voluntary 70% retail rule to appease the regulators — means that if Avant survives long enough and does well, it will almost assuredly attract close regulatory scrutiny.

Evaluating the Avant Opportunity

Historically, there has been big money made in the personal development industry using network marketing. Companies such as Liberty League (now Polaris Global), Life Path, and Wealthmasters (although they’re something of a hybrid) all play in the top tier direct sales space with a focus on personal development. In each of these companies, there is a small handful of people who have become very successful and made very significant income. Few however have been able to do so for a sustained period of time because of the need to constantly recruit new distributors.

If the Avant products are similar to those of Liberty League, Life Path and Polaris, then I expect the events will be generally well done and will truly make an impact for those people who really choose to apply the information. Brent Payne has always consistently delivered solid events and I see no reason not to believe he will continue to do so again.

The short-term earning potential with Avant is very significant and with the introduction of a residual override pool, certainly the opportunity to earn ongoing residual income is superior to the original Liberty League model. However, unless Avant is able to break the historical personal development pattern of customer and distributor attrition, my own opinion is that there will be an insufficient legitimate (meaning non-distributors) retail customer base in the long term.

I also dislike the monthly website model. To me it becomes a form of almost “disguised” auto-ship. I am not opposed to paying for the website and I do appreciate that the use of a replicated website provides an easy way to track enrolments, but in my opinion the personalized website does not provide any marketing effectiveness whatsoever for positioning your opportunity — and it is certainly not worth the ongoing monthly fee. There are many companies that offer personalized websites for an annual fee of $29.95 or less, so I have never understood why or how there needs to be a monthly fee.

Conclusion

As I’ve written previously, I am no longer a fan of high cost opportunities. After being involved in Liberty League for nearly five years and seeing what was and was not happening on our own team, I just cannot recommend that level of an investment to anyone who is new to network marketing — nor to anyone who is not already having success. For the average person, I believe the financial risk is too high.

On top of that, unless Avant or any such company can build a strong customer base that is willing to repurchase the products and thereby relieve the pressure of recruiting new distributors, it and business models like it will continue to be susceptible to the regulators deeming them to be illegal pyramid schemes.

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