Amway Watch

GQ isn’t part of my staple reading diet, but every so often my personalized Google News feed pulls in a great story loaded with actionable insights. Last month, it was an article on the breakout of personal genomics, entitled, “The Book of Me.”

Today GQ published an article online on  four-star General David Petraeus, entitled, “Leader of the Year.” A key graph:

He starts by talking about his father, Sixtus Petraeus, who passed away six months ago at the age of 92. Petraeus couldn’t even leave Iraq to bury him. (As he puts it, “Our soldiers make all the same sacrifices.”) Sixtus was a Dutch sea captain who came to the U.S. at the start of World War II, “when Holland was overrun. He was at sea, and they couldn’t go back to Rotterdam, so they went to New York.” He was “a stubborn, independent Dutchman” who was both extraordinarily proud of his only son and a strict disciplinarian who pushed him to the limit. “I was raised by the kind of father who if his son could do twenty pull-ups, he wanted you to do twenty-one. There were, you know, no excuses. I mean, there was a phrase he actually used: ‘Results, boy.’ ” 

Later on in the article, writer Lisa DePaulo notes that the patterns of change experimented with and refined to success by Petraeus when he was running the 101 Airborne Division in Mosul in 2003, did not come from the top of the “theatre” or Pentagon command structure. They came from “the fringe,” or as Petraeus says:

“Well, I would sort of think it was intuitively obvious. To be truthful…strategic leaders make big decisions at times. And at my level, in the first year and very early on, a huge decision was to say, ‘We are going to do nation building.’ I know that we as a country didn’t think the military should get into nation building and all this. But very early on, we decided in the 101st that we’re gonna do it…” 

Those who have followed the Iraq war in depth — and not just through the superficial coverage in most of the press — will know that Petraeus was not popular with his “uplines” in the command structure for his views or for the successes he achieved in Mosul, even though he did it without “glory-seeking” or challenging the chain of command. ** 

After his outstandingly successful Mosul tour of duty was up, Petraeus was transferred by his superiors in the Pentagon command structure, back to a desk job for awhile (where he wrote a new Army field manual on counterinsurgency strategy), before being plucked out by President Bush to turn the war around.

That’s an oversimplified and truncated version of events, but the point is that Petraeus didn’t wait for those “smarter” than him, “more experienced” than him in the “same old same old” to tell him what to do, within his legitimate sphere of decision making and action taking.

As an aside, if you enjoy romances, writer Lisa DePaulo humorously shares how Petraeus met and courted his wife. DePaulo notes with supreme deadpan:

Perhaps the “wildest” thing was when he [young cadet Petraeus] ended up dating the daughter of the superintendent (who also happened to be a three-star, soon to be four-star general named William Knowlton) of West Point. Or “the Supe’s daughter,” as she was known. Knowlton was a man you didn’t want to mess with… 

SPEAKING OF AMWAY GLOBAL, have you thought about how real change — and as Petraeus puts it, “irreversible success,” — is going to come to your business? As Bridgett put it in a comment at IBOFB’s Amway Talk blog a couple days ago, change always happens at the fringes first.

** disclosure: one of my cousins served with the 101 Airborne in Mosul as an army doc for two years, which has added to the respect I have for Petraeus’ approach to modeling personal leadership and responsibility.

Fortune Magazine, in an article published online Nov. 10, has yet again provided a fascinating insight into why Apple is both the ‘Most Admired Company’ in North America (if not the world), and perhaps the best run company too. Much of the public credit goes to iconic founder and “reinventor” Steve Jobs. But this article reveals one of Job’s less-remarked-on skills — the ability to develop a deep bench of executive talent to support and extend the ‘Apple Vision’.

Fortune’s Phillip Elmer-Dewitt writes at his Apple 2.0 blog — quoting from the ChangeWave Research Report released yesterday:

“It’s not easy to increase market share in one of the worst spending environments in years,” writes Carton, but Apple seems poised to do so. Among those few consumers who plan to buy a laptop in the next three months, one-third said they planned to buy an Apple — up from 29% in September.

As Amway Global prepares to wrap up another financial year and evaluates the success, thus far, of its Transformation game plan, what core goal could it set to ensure future leadership, not just in the direct sales “industry” but in a way that would empower it to stand along side industry giants in the Fortune ‘Most Admired’ list of companies. 

Remember that it was only 10 or so years ago when Apple was languishing – it stock had become a ‘laughing stock’ (before Jobs returned). Michael Dell infamously recommended that the best thing that could be done with Apple would be to liquidate it and return the remaining scraps of value to the shareholders.

Today, Apple has been surging with record-breaking growth, profits and good will while at the same time adjusting and fine-tuning price points on the strategic Macbook, iPhone and iPod lines — even while continuing to ‘add value’ to those products, and ‘build out’ from the base of raving fans (to borrow from the Ken Blanchard title) created on its common platform of iPod, iPhone, Macbook and worlds’ most customer-friendly software interface.

SPEAKING OF AMWAY, is Amway Global the kind of enterprise which should aspire to being mentioned with respect and admiration (and, by its IBOs, with pride) in the same breath as Apple, Google, Goldman Sachs, Johnson & Johnson, Berkshire Hathaway, or Toyota?

Could Amway Global — and that includes independent business owners — pull off its own ”Cinderella story“?

Well, why not? 

Seth Godin has made the audio of his recent book Tribes available for FREE. Interesting marketing strategy given that the hardcover edition was published only two weeks ago on Oct. 16. Lots of content in the audio that is highly applicable to our business development model. IBOFightBack, over at The Truth About Amway, has the details here. Or you can go directly to the special promo at Audible.com and download directly.

One of my favorite blogs — GigaOM — posted a story recently about Paul Polak, a successful life-long entrepreneur. Polak started his first business at age 15, and is still starting, funding and incubating new businesses at the agile age of 75. Complete article here. Polak ascribes much of his business success to the following 12 principles, described more fully in his recent book, Out of Poverty: What Works When Traditional Approaches Fail.

SPEAKING OF AMWAY, which ones do you identify with, and which ones could you adopt, adapt or modify to help your business become more successful? Not your upline or sponsor’s business. Not Alticor or Amway Global’s business. YOUR business.

 The 12 Steps to Practical Problem Solving:

1. Go where the action is. “Spend significant time with your customers. This is how you learn what they need,” he says. Not hours, days. Polak lived with his farmers for 6 months.

2. Interview at least 100 customers a year. You do it. Not an employee. Listen to what they have to say. “Too many entrepreneurs build the product they want to build — not the one that’s needed.”

3. Context matters. If your solution isn’t right for the context, for example, if it costs too much for the customers you’re trying to serve, you won’t succeed.

4. Think big. Act big. 

5. Think like a child.

6. See and do the obvious. Others won’t, which is opportunity for you.

7. Leverage precedents. If somebody has already invented it, don’t do it again.

8. Scale. Your business must have potential to scale. Remember, your market must include at least 1 million customers.

9. Design to specific cost and price targets. Not the other way around. (Celeste: it means — Do not price to your design, design to the price you need to hit to make your product appropriate to your customer.).

10. Follow practical three-year plans. Two years is too short. Ten is too long.

11. Visit your customers again. And again. “Any successful business in this country is based on talking to your customers all the time. A good CEO spends half his time ‘in the field.’”

12. Stay positive. Don’t be distracted by what other people think. 

I found this interesting WebMD article via a Diane Vanhoven  post on her Facebook page. It speaks for itself.  SPEAKING OF AMWAY, how does this information affect your view of your potential for building a strong FIRST CIRCLE, PERSONAL PROFIT CENTER for your business? 

 Who uses supplements?

How many people use vitamins and supplements each year? Which ones are most popular? Do doctors use them?  Here’s a rundown of some important supplement statistics, based on the best available data. 

• Number of Americans who use dietary supplements each year: 150 million.
• Total amount of U.S. supplement sales in 2006: $22.46 billion.
• Approximate percentage increase in U.S. supplement sales between 1996 and 2006: 100%.
• Percentage of adults who consider themselves regular users of supplements: 52%.
• Amount of money spent on supplements each year by a “heavy consumer” — someone who buys four or more supplements a month:  $576.
• Percentage of doctors who recommend supplements to patients: 79%.
• Percentage of doctors who actively counsel their patients on how to use supplements: 25%.
• Percentage of doctors who use supplements themselves: 72%.
• The top five selling supplements in 2007: 1) Multivitamins, 2) calcium, 3) vitamin C 4) Fish oil 5) Vitamin E. 
• Supplement with the fastest sales growth in 2006: fish and animal oils, for which sales increased 36%.
• Percentage of Americans who consider vitamins and supplements safe: 84%.
• Percentage of Americans who do not realize that supplements are not tested or approved by a government agency — like the FDA — before they are sold: 52%.
• Percentage of Americans who do not realize that advertising claims made by the manufacturer of a supplement are not preapproved by the government: 63%.
• Most common place that doctors and nurses store their own supplements: the kitchen.
• Percentage of Americans who take both prescription medicine and dietary supplements: 16%.
• Percentage of Americans who would rather treat themselves than see a doctor: 73%.

Buried at the end of the last post — on the GQ magazine story related to Personalized Health — was a jewel of a link to a quick, four-minute streaming video from the Interleukin Genetics site. It’s simply titled, The Science Behind Interleukin Genetics. 

If you’ve ever pondered over how to explain to a retail customer (or a potential business associate) what the Gensona DNA tests are about and the life-long value of the information they provide, now you don’t (have to ponder). Just refer your retail customer or potential business associate to this link for a quick, easy-to-understand presentation.

The Science Behind Interleukin Genetics

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Still with me? Attention span longer than you  thought? (hehe) 

Beyond that, you should still know something about the Nutrilite brand and why it gives us such a unique position in the marketplace. If you don’t know how to talk about Nutrilite’s history and the just-in-time fresh fresh freshness of the organic functional-whole-food-based products you represent, here are a few more “movies” to which you can go (and take your retail customer along).

Washington State organic farm

Mexico organic farm

Brazil organic farm

Optimal Health: The Heart of the Original Brand

Lifestyle

Personalization

Nutrigenomics

Nutrilite clinical validation studies

Nutrilite research associations

SPEAKING OF AMWAY, don’t foget to watch this space for a timely and provocative three-part series coming very soon from the pen keyboard of Chuck Lia.

Blessings for a great day…