Eat Like A Bear! Revenue Philosophy
To our community (from Amanda Rose):
You already have all you need to lose the weight you desire, before finding us here at Eat Like a Bear! It is our mission and core philosophy to help shine a bit of light on your path.
Since you already have everything you need, you obviously do not need to buy anything here. Make no mistake about that.
Since many of us have struggled so much for so long in the question of “how to lose weight,” a core mission here at Eat Like a Bear! is to drive massive, life-changing levels of weight loss. Anyone anywhere can learn the very core of what we do in our free Three-Day Challenge (here). Please take advantage of that key tool and lean into the amazing transformational stories coming out of our community.
Founded in one of California’s most impoverished and most obese counties, Eat Like a Bear seeks to be accessible to everyone. All of this can be implemented on a SNAP budget (food stamps). That is a core value here at Eat Like a Bear and it will never change as long as I lead this community.
Over the years, I have built premium content for those who want to dig in deeper. That content has driven additional success in our community. Read more about our free versus premium (paid) content here (ClICK!)
How We Fund Ourselves in 2023
It takes quite a bit of revenue to float a growing ship and 100% of our funding to date is through our own information products — the books and digital courses you can find here. If you have purchased them, thank you for your support in this mission.
As it is, we’re a fairly under-funded organization given our philosophy and mission. As we increase our revenue, I do intend to increase our public (free) content. We can have an even greater impact with more support.
Our Business Back Story
To understand how we even got here, I will note that we had no plan for any of this whatsoever. I lost 140 pounds and had unexpected success with a viral video. I built a community around that video and used my professional background as an analyst and teacher to support it. The video, A Postcard from Yellowstone, may be the most impactful weight loss video in social media.
I have begun to recount the business back stories on LinkedIn, including:
- The early pre-revenue days
- Learning content driving weight loss success AND revenue
- Leader versus influencer
- All of the gray-haired ladies
The Eat Like a Bear Revenue Direction
We have reinvested every dollar back into the Eat Like a Bear community. I earn far less these days than I ever earned in my prior career. In that spirit of service, I know that we would have more success community-wide with more revenue.
Bearish Product Development
Five years in, I have a growing sense of the core messages that are driving our unusual levels of success in weight loss. A big part of our success has been in NOT selling products that are often associated with weight loss (e.g. weight loss accelerator products, food supplements, and specialty foods). As I look to scaling these specific messages, we are also looking to funding them through our own physical products. Look for additional revenue streams at Eat Like a Bear in the future, including a basic selection of merch items and consumer-oriented products, all of which we identify as having the potential to drive BOTH weight loss success AND revenue.
Seeking Brand Partnerships
As we grow our main message in social media video, I am seeking compatible brand partners likely in these categories:
Vegetables/Lettuce/Groceries. The core food that unites the Eat Like a Bear community is vegetables, and we eat a whole lot of them. We have filled shopping carts with lettuce and cauliflower for years here. If you represent a brand that would like our help in filling shopping carts with more of your vegetables, please contact me. (If you represent some other sort of food, I am sure it is awesome, but it is not likely a fit.)
Travel/Adventure: At Eat Like a Bear, our tagline is “Eat and go be awesome.” Seeing community members out living their most vibrant lives IS the inspiration that drives a lot of the success you are seeing here on this platform. In our roadmap is to produce far more video content on the “go be awesome” part of what we do. The great thing is that a whole lot of awesomeness is cheap and free, so you will find me out doing that. If you represent a brand that can help us elevate this message, please contact me. (Including: flights, cars, RVs, gasoline, lodging, etc)
Functional Fashion. The focus of Eat Like a Bear is to get out and live our most vibrant lives and how we look doing so is irrelevant. (In fact, I think the “how we look” message is stupid.) However, the community tends to be rural and in the heartland with goals of getting back out, working hard and playing hard. In this category, we would be looking for a brand that wants its products to be tested to the limits, getting completely filthy and maybe even ruined, as characters in the larger story of our vibrant lives.
More Background
I have discussed our revenue model very little publicly, but did so for the community in the spring of 2021 as we counted up our our “Century Bears,” preparing to hit 100. These two videos are from that season.
“I measure the time I spend at Eat Like a Bear according to this: Will my time improve our rate of success?“
Listen to Amanda’s YouTube live about measuring success.
“We need revenue to pay our increasing bills for free content, but we put the revenue right back into growing our message.”
Listen to Amanda’s YouTube live about the Eat Like a Bear! revenue model.(Also: “You’re more likely to find me as a rodeo clown in Idaho than selling Eat Like a Bear to venture capitalists.” and “I have yet to be paid, at all, for my work at Eat Like a Bear!”)