Suspendisse vel tortor at nibh. by Er Bjorn

SUCCESS FROM HOME

FROM THE PUBLISHER OF

ee Fr D E DV SID IN

Ken Blanchard Uncovers The Secret to Leadershipp

SUCCESS MAGAZINE

XANGO The Category XANGO

Creators in Wellness The Original Mangosteen Accept No Substitutes

Dara Torres Age Is Just a Number

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Queen of Fruits, The King of

Opportunity Joe Morton describes his journey to uncovering the mangosteen and helping found XanGo. by K. Shelby Skrhak and Nicole Bywater

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FEATURES

24 24 Saying No to Chronic Stress Modern life can be exhausting and pressure-packed, but it is possible to reverse fatigue, combat chronic stress and start thriving today.

30 The Category Creators Pioneers in the ﬁeld of green chemistry, XanGo products continue to chart the course of the health and wellness market.

66 Hall of Fame These 500K Premier leaders are climbing the ranks to success.

68 XanGo Brand Power XanGo understands the best marketing comes from the things unsaid.

102 The Goodness Movement

102

XanGo’s hands-on approach to charitable giving allows everyone in the company to be part of its mission to make the world a better place.

106 Go Pro with XanGo XGoPro is revolutionizing the way XanGo distributors run their businesses.

110 Worlds of Encouragement XanGo knows how to reward its distributors—by giving them experiences they never dreamed of.

114 Home Ofﬁce at Your Service XanGo is working hand in hand with its distributors to give them the unique tools and support they need to succeed.

110 2

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PROFILES

54 World Power XanGo’s international growth is in its infancy, but its expanding success is largely attributed to these global business builders.

42 Change of Pace XanGo’s Dwayne Dyer left behind the comforts of a good career to strive for the rewards of a life lived well.

44 Five Years For Barbara King-Schmidt, ﬁnancial success pales in comparison to cherished time with a loved one.

46 Success in the City

88 Freedom Rings in Arizona Tommy and Lindsay Johnson realize their dreams with XanGo.

90 Living the Dream In uncertain times, Andy and Brenda Willoughby have found security and the hope for an incredible future.

Thanks to XanGo, 200K Premiers Chris and Lisa Peterson live their dream life in the Big Apple.

92 Daring to Believe

48 A Life Measured by Donation, Not Duration

94 Corporate Slaves No More

Jim and Priscilla Harrison are ﬁnally able to focus on life’s important things, like giving back from what they’ve been blessed with.

50 Living Extraordinarily Bob and Grace Dyck have fulﬁlled their dream of working full time in the industry, earning both the ﬁnancial and time freedom they’d always hoped for.

52 Finding Peace Carolyn Johnson turned down her ﬁrst network marketing opportunity; 30 years later, she learned what she had been missing.

John and Mary Spoelstra say hope is the key to setting others free.

Jim and Candy Webb used their business sense to build their own dream.

96 Desert Dreamers After ﬁnally discovering success through XanGo, James and Sherry Sanford are now focused on helping others realize their dreams.

98 Turning Over a New Life When near ﬁnancial disaster and illness struck, Glenn and Gayla Sparks found health and hope with XanGo.

100 Opportunity Without Borders These business builders in Mexico continue to climb the XanGo ranks.

44 96

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ADVISORS 14 It’s Your Life. Take Control of It. Why starting your own home-based business is a move in the right direction. by David Lee

19 The Age of the Entrepreneur This rise of the giant corporations is rapidly slipping into the history books as we return to our entrepreneurial roots. by Paul Zane Pilzer

74 The Water Doesn’t Know How Old You Are

Five-Time Olympian Dara Torres says age is only a state of mind. by Dara Torres

82 The Adversity Advantage Adversity holds the key to achieving everyday greatness in life, business and society. by Erik Weihenmayer and Dr. Paul Stoltz

118 The Secret Ken Blanchard teaches the answer to the question we all have: What makes a good leader? by K. Shelby Skrhak

118

EVERY ISSUE 6

Editor’s Note

Notes and News

18 Bookshelf 80 Health Talk 117 Ofﬁce Space 124 Rendezvous: Cancún 128 Last Word

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EDITOR’SNOTE

t’s a labor of love. That’s how we describe the hustle and bustle of writing, editing, photographing, designing and producing every issue of Success from Home. Long days and short deadlines are par for the course in the publishing world, but, for the most part, we do this because we love it. In meeting and learning more about XanGo’s six co-founders, Aaron Garrity, Gary Hollister, Joe Morton, Gordon Morton, Kent Wood and Bryan Davis, it’s evident they feel the same way. Joe Morton told us during an interview that his phone is never off—it’s always at his side, always ready to be answered. He’s willing—and wants—to answer every call, no matter the time of night. He, just like his fellow co-founders, is immersed in the business because he loves network marketing and the opportunity it brings to hundreds of thousands of people. The co-founders’ commitment to founding XanGo, a unique, category-creating business in the wellness industry, is all-encompassing and inspirational. Since XanGo’s founding on Sept. 11, 2002, the groundbreaking health and wellness company has enrolled more than one million distributors in 33 countries. This issue presents four unique authors with inspirational messages. Ken Blanchard, legendary author of The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Entrepreneur, shares with us an important secret that all leaders should know. What is that secret? It’s more than a simple answer, but great leadership is something you are, not necessarily something you do. Prominent author, professor and direct selling expert Paul Zane Pilzer explains why now is the age of the entrepreneur. No matter what the stock market is doing, or how your 401(k) looks, remember, the key to your financial future lies inside yourself. You can make your financial dreams come true. Speaking of making dreams come true, mountain climber Erik Weihenmayer shares his inspirational journey of climbing the snowcapped summit of Mount McKinley, the towering peaks of Aconcagua and Kilimanjaro and the ultimate challenge, Mount Everest. That’s not the whole story, though. Weihenmayer was born with an eye disorder that left him blind by the age of 13. His poignant memoir reminds us to struggle to push past the limits imposed on us. Another dreamer, five-time Olympic swimmer Dara Torres, reminds us that age is just a number in her motivational memoir about staying fit, aging gracefully and pursuing your dreams. She captured the hearts of Americans when she launched her Olympic comeback as a new mother at the age of 41—years after she had retired from competitive swimming, and eight years since her last Olympics. Torres reveals how she kept up her Olympic training—and her spirits—while caring for her infant daughter and contending with her father’s long battle with cancer. Her story is a rousing one. Finally, we extend a big thank-you to the corporate staff at XanGo, who graciously welcomed us into their offices and gave us a very in-depth look into what makes their successful company tick. Their creative, editorial, corporate communications and marketing departments exemplify people who take pride in their work, and we’re grateful to have met them. And, hopefully, one day we’ll meet you—a new rising star in your own home-based business. We’ve got the writers and photographers waiting—all we need is you. SfH

Deborah K. Heisz Editor in Chief editor@successfromhome.com

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“…Strategic Acceleration will help you cultivate an attitude of willingness, embrace change, clarify your vision and focus, and deliver results….”

CREATIVE DIRECTOR

— Stephen M. R. Covey, New York Times best-selling author of The Speed of Trust

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MANAGING EDITOR

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

“Over the years I have learned that it takes both a certain mindset as well as living by real success principles to achieve great things. Let Tony Jeary share his insights with you.”

PRODUCTION MANAGER

— Ken Blanchard, co-author of The One Minute Manager

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“This book will impact the way you think about results and the way you go about achieving them….” — Zig Ziglar, New York Times best-selling author of See You at the Top

K. SHELBY SKRHAK R. TODD ELIASON AMY ANDERSON, SANDRA BIENKOWSKI, ERIN CASEY, DAVID LEE ALAN DWELLE JOHN LEE SMITH, KIM BAKER, AMY MCMURRY CATALINA DELTORO, KARLA GARCIA, KATHLENA SMITH, FLORO TORRES THERESA MESECHER PETER TEPP WHITNEY ALLEN

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Commissions are paid to Distributors who qualify pursuant to the Compensation Plan and who are in compliance with the Contract. A Distributor’s success is only achieved through the regular and repeated Retail Sale of Products and the regular and repeated Retail Sales by its Downline Organization. As the success of any Distributor depends largely on the personal efforts of that Distributor, the Company does not guarantee any level of proﬁt or success, nor does it guarantee a Distributor a speciﬁc income. A Distributor does not receive compensation for sponsoring or recruiting other Distributors. The only way to earn Commissions is through the sale of Products. Any information or statements included on the Site regarding XanGo® Juice or other dietary supplements have not been evaluated by the United States Food and Drug Administration and are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

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December 2009

Health

Newsworthy notes for your everyday

LIFE!

“To ensure good health: Eat lightly, breathe deeply, live moderately, cultivate cheerfulness and maintain an interest in life.” —William Londen

“Health is the greatest gift, contentment the greatest wealth, faithfulness the best relationship.” —Hindu Prince Siddhartha Gautama

“How are you feeling today?”

“The ﬁrst wealth is health.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson

If someone asked you,

What would your answer be? “Perfect.” “Fantastic.” “I’ve got energy to spare.” Chances are, those are not your answers. All of us have occasional aches and pains or days where our energy levels are low, and that’s OK. Science tells us the daily formula for good health is simple: a nutritious diet, about 30 minutes of moderate exercise, ample water and reasonable rest. If it were only that easy! Here are some tips to help you find the best formula for your best health.

By the Book Health Deﬁnition: Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or inﬁrmity. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH

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Tips from

The 5-Factor Diet Getting into your favorite pair of jeans may now be a bit easier thanks to Harley Pasternak, M.Sc., a sought-after diet and fitness expert and the author of The 5-Factor Diet. Power Up the Pantry When Harley starts working with someone new, he first asks them to do some housecleaning in their pantry. Making sure you have the ingredients for healthy meals each week will help keep you on track. Hit the store once a week and stock up on plenty of fruits (with their skins, please), low-sugar beverages, proteins (like skinless chicken or salmon) and veggies.

Eat Well, Eat Often Eat five small meals throughout the day. Your body is like a furnace; food is the fuel that stokes the fi re and keeps the metabolism working throughout the day. Eating throughout the day will help keep you full and thinking and feeling your best.

Count to Five Before Each Meal Make sure each meal meets five simple criteria—a lean protein, healthy carbs, fiber from fruits and vegetables, healthy fats, and a low-sugar beverage. The beverage doesn’t have to be water; there are plenty of options, like sparkling or low-sugar flavored waters.

Keep a Journal Whether you are working to meet your individual goals or trying to trim down an entire family, a journal can be a good way to keep track of recipes you like and keep you motivated as you work toward your goal. We all need to remind ourselves of what we’re working toward. A journal can be a great way to keep track of those successes and your progress.

Taking Stock Speak from the Heart Leave a love note for that special someone. If you’re feeling especially thankful for someone in your life, say so in a brief, simple note. You could slip it into a briefcase or lunchbox or hand it to them with a hug. Catch up at the dinner table. During a family dinner, go around the table and have everyone tell one other person what they value about them. Share information about 10

your schedules, how the day went and ideas about the rest of the week. Make a phone call. Set aside 20 or 30 minutes to call that friend you haven’t talked with in months. You’ll be glad you did. Talk to your children. Have a conversation with your kids about what they like, how their day went, what’s bothering them. Really tune in and listen to what they’re saying.

Daily Dose

Seven Days to a Healthier You Sunday

Buy a pedometer and aspire to meet the American Heart Association’s recommendation of walking 3,000 steps per day.

Monday

Are you ever out of breath after taking a couple of flights of stairs? Turn stairwells into your fi tness friend by choosing the steps instead of the elevator. Whether it’s two flights or 10, watch how quickly your breathing improves.

Tuesday

When you’re trapped at your desk or stuck on a plane, do calf raises. By flexing and pointing—first lifting toes, returning to a flat foot, then lifting your heels and squeezing your calf muscles—you are pumping blood up your legs and improving your circulation.

Wednesday Give up the perfect parking space. Forever. By parking farther away from the store, ofﬁce or gym, you are burning more calories. Little walks add up.

Thursday Eat natural. Take a day to give up processed food ﬁlled with preservatives and sodium. Choose food that looks the same as when it was harvested. Stick to the outer perimeter of the grocery store when you shop.

Friday Cool down. Tough week? Take one day to do an activity to soothe your mind. Read a book. Enjoy a sunset. Take a bubble bath. Listen to your iPod.

Saturday Let your dog think you are indecisive. Take your dog for a 10-minute walk and then jog for two minutes. Repeat.

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As much as we seem to complain about wanting more sleep, most Americans say they wake up naturally—without an alarm clock, radio or a nudge from a spouse.

As the debate surrounding global warming continues inues to heat up, more and more Americans have found smart ways to think green,” too, and act green. If you are interested in becoming “green,” but are not sure where to begin, try the following easy tips: Clean Green

Alarm Clock/ Radio/Music 23%

Wh en yo uw

Wake up Naturally 54%

e? y us all pic

WebWatch Parenting Press

mber 15%

As you can see, being green does not have to involve great hardship or sacriﬁce. On the contrary, being green can be easy if you just follow some of the above-listed tips in your daily life. Just remember, mber, no matter what you do to think and act green, the sooner you begin, n, the better.

Family Me

4% 2%

You can reduce the amount of fuel your vehicle uses byy keeping tires properly inﬂated, sticking to the speed limitt and lightening the load you carry in the trunk. It’s also a goodd idea to avoid quick stops and starts and to keep your car well maintained. aintained. Of course, the best way to reduce fuel consumption is to drive less frequently. So think twice about driving somewhere you could get to on foot. Walking is better for the environment and can save ave you some green when it comes to paying for gas.

Bl Ph ackB o n er e A r y/ lar Cel m l 12 %

Drive Smart

S un

Replacing ordinary light bulbs in your house with moree efﬁcient corkscrew-shaped ﬂuorescent bulbs could help reduce the amount of carbon released into the atmosphere. In fact, it’s estimated mated that if every house in America replaced just one regular bulb, the carbon-reducing effects would be the same as if 1 millionn cars were taken off the road.

morning, which (if an y) d oy ou e None of Thes up Call

See the Light

he in t p eu ak

Wa k e -

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, billions llions of pounds of chemicals are used in the United States each ch year. Homeowners can reduce the effect their housecleaning has on the Earth by using environmentally preferable cleaners.

The

Everyday Tips for Thinking and Acting Green

Wake-up Call!

Alarm Clock/ Buzzer 30%

Source: Sleepless in America Study of 2,000 adults of varying backgrounds by SleepBetter.org; survey by The Segmentation Company.

www.parentingpress.com Guide your children wisely and build on your parenting skills with book recommendations from child care professionals. Titles include practical information on a range of subjects, as well as a tips and tools archive with more than 400 ideas for handling common situations. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH

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Be a

Better Leader! Let’s be honest: Leading other people can be challenging. When we find ourselves in charge of a staff or project, or an entire company, answers don’t always come easily. In fact, our desire to get things done, find solutions and close deals sometimes gets in the way of good, clear communication. And that’s when things start to break down. Check out these tips from Monte Enbysk at the Microsoft Small Business Center on being a better manager of time, information and people: • Be a better listener. Pay attention to your team. • Make time for team members. Regular, one-on-one meetings with team members are important. If you can’t meet weekly, do it at least twice a month. • Put out a consistent message about your values. Knowing who you are and what you stand for can help your employees make better decisions on their own (or at least decisions that you will like better). If you’re sending mixed messages, explain them or suffer the consequences. • Be effective in speaking to groups. If you can’t speak well at team meetings, you may lose credibility as a team leader. Take just a few minutes to be prepared for every speaking presentation you give. • Don’t hide behind e-mail. Most delicate matters must be discussed in person. Most conflicts must be settled in person, or at least by phone. When emotions are involved, e-mail becomes a less-appropriate vehicle to communicate. Source: Microsoft Small Business Center 12

Who Is Renting Space in Your Head? Overcoming the Negative If you aren’t yet the person you always thought you could become, personal-growth expert Gary Coxe has some advice to get you there. “Where would you be, what would you have and how would you think differently if you didn’t let anyone, anything, any economy or any negative thought in your past rent space in your head?” Coxe asks. “We have to be very aware if we are letting something or someone rent space in our heads that shouldn’t be there. And in order to change it, you have to first acknowledge it.” But it’s not enough to simply tell yourself positive affirmations, he says. “You have to take your positive affirmations and turn them into beliefs and then take action based on those beliefs.” How do you do that? Pay attention to the thoughts you let stream through your head. Are the majority of your thoughts positive, or do you let negative thoughts continually stream through your mind? If so, consciously transition those thoughts to positive beliefs. “When things happen to us, we have a tendency not to let them go. We create a story, and if we aren’t careful, it will validate that we are no good. That’s the pattern we can break.” And don’t let your feelings control you. “Unfortunately, as human beings, we have been taught to be slaves to our feelings,” Coxe says, “but when your feelings aren’t in harmony with your goals, ignore your feelings.”

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Question Yourself Becoming the Best You Can you question yourself to success? We think so! Ask yourself the following questions, and your three answers could put you on the path to your best you.

1. What are you grateful for right now? Seeing the greater possibility of the future starts with knowing what’s great about your life now.

2. What would you say if the five most important people in your life passed away and you were speaking at their funerals? Tell them now.

3. What do you hope people say about you after you are gone? Live that life now.

TIP: After you answer, take action.

IN A MINUTE YOU COULD... ➲ Check your tire pressure. Your car will be more gas-efﬁcient and safer on the roads.

➲ Reprogram your mind and mood by consciously replacing a bad thought with a good one. (Instead of ﬁxating on being overweight, focus on incorporating healthier habits.)

He Said It Best ➲ Eat a handful of almonds. It’s not nutty. Experts say almonds are the healthiest nuts you can eat and are a good source of vitamin E and ﬁber.

➲ Inhale some fresh air. Slowly taking in the air as you walk outside will rejuvenate you.

➲ Think of someone you love.

I haven’t failed. I’ve identified 10,000 ways this doesn’t work. —Thomas Edison

Enjoy a relationship in your life with thoughts of admiration and gratitude for that special someone.

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Some of the most successful companies in the world were started during recessions or depressions, including Microsoft, IBM, Disney, General Electric, FedEx and many others.

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s s o B t n n a w w O I y M er v g e n i r t he Be n a w w rk I o W ver e n e h w k r and o W s y a n d o i t d a n l a e r n d l i i Bu endsh fri imit Unl off

It’s Your Future. Take Control of It. Why starting your own home-based business is a move in the right direction. by David Lee It’s been said that the difference between a recession and a depression is that when your neighbor loses his job, it’s a recession. If you lose your job, it’s a depression. No matter how you’ve been affected by the recent economic downturn, it’s been a scary time for a lot of Americans. But, like so many other times throughout our country’s history, when we get knocked down, we pop up even stronger. It’s the American way. It’s what has made this country one of the wealthiest and most successful in the world. In its infancy, America attracted talented and visionary entrepreneurs wanting to build a new life for themselves. Many of them left home and came to this country short on cash but big on dreams. That time is not too different from what’s happening today. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 15

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It’s Your Future. Take Control of It.

Times Are A-Changin’ The U.S. Department of Labor reported in September 2009 that nearly one in 10 people are unemployed. If you haven’t lost your job, you know someone who has. The stock market recently lost half its value and hovers in investment purgatory. Home values have plummeted. That’s the bad news. The good news? Some of the most successful companies in the world were started during recessions or depressions, including Microsoft, IBM, Disney, General Electric, FedEx and many others. Things will get better. They always do, because we make them better. The forward-thinking entrepreneurs take advantage of a ripe market, much like the basic economic principle of buy low, sell high.

Benefits of Being SelfEmployed

Direct Selling Mythology and Truth Myth: Direct selling is a pyramid scheme where only the top few make money. While the direct selling industry went through a rough spot in the late ’80s and early ’90s, with some companies promoting their business as a get-rich-quick scheme, the difference between a pyramid scheme and a legitimate direct selling or network marketing business is that, in a legitimate direct sales business, you make your money from selling quality products and each individual can make money according to their efforts. In general, if the company requires a substantial “startup cost,” will not buy back unsold product or if products are not sold directly to customers, run away and don’t look back. Myth: You have to be a great salesperson to build a successful direct selling business. The vast majority of people in direct selling businesses do not have sales backgrounds, but rather they are normal people who were looking for a different way to earn an income. Slight Edge author Jeff Olson, who made millions building direct selling businesses, says that “natural salesmen” must forget everything they know about selling in order to be successful at direct selling. He stresses that network marketing is about sharing information and products, not about hard selling. In the person-to-person direct selling industry, building a successful business is often as simple as talking to people about an opportunity and products and services that you are already excited about and believe in. Myth: People who get involved with direct selling companies just want a fast and easy way to make money.

People are rethinking the traditional business model and the generic work schedule. They aren’t staying at the same job for 30-plus years like their parents or grandparents did. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that Americans hold an average of 8.6 jobs between the ages of 18 and 32. More people are going into business for themselves, even if it’s just part time. It’s Your Move If you made a list of the things you dislike about your job, it might include: f The harrowing commute f A monotonous 9-to-5 schedule f Your boss f Your boss’s boss f Time away from your family f Fear of layoffs 16

Like any business, in direct selling, you get what you put into it. Direct selling can be an excellent way to earn money, and the vast majority of direct selling distributors run their businesses part time. A person who wants to make a few hundred dollars a month and eventually reaches that goal can be considered just as successful as someone who has worked much longer at building a business and makes thousands each month. The key is the ability to reach whatever goal you set for yourself. Myth: I would never have time to run a homebased direct selling business. Before you convince yourself of that, consider that the Direct Selling Association’s 2008 National Salesforce Survey reveals that 43 percent of those involved in direct selling spend no more than four hours per week on their business, and just 12 percent spend more than 20 hours.

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And the list goes on. We all have our good days and bad at work, but when the bad days become too numerous to count, it might be a gentle nudge in the right direction. And that direction is going into business for yourself. Being in business for yourself does away with pretty much all of these headaches. You are your own boss. You choose your work schedule. You choose who you work with. You are in control. Direct selling, also known as network marketing, is a great way to take control of your career and your income. The beneﬁts? Here are just a few: • Startup costs are typically very low—often less than $500. • You don’t have to be a professional salesperson to be successful. • You get to meet new people and share products or services with them that you love and believe in. • Your success is determined by your own hard work. • Direct selling companies often continually provide materials and services to help you grow your business. Why Direct Selling? Very successful companies selling a vast array of products choose direct selling as a business model. Many of these products are premiumquality when compared to retail offerings. Everything—from makeup

It’s the American way. It’s what has made this one of the wealthiest and most successful countries in the world.

Why Do People Start Their Own Business? 40% Want to love what they do 24% Want to be their own boss 21% Want to have a more ﬂexible schedule 15% Want to spend more time with family to health and wellness products to legal services to greeting cards—is being sold through the direct selling model. So how can these companies pay people to sell their products? Direct selling companies pay their independent distributors instead of moving products through retail locations, which incurs overhead costs, such as rent and costly advertising. Distributors are the beneﬁciaries, enjoying residual income—meaning the work you’ve done in the past builds upon what you currently do to increase your earnings. Consider a music artist who writes a hit song. Each time that song is recorded and released by other artists or used, say, on a movie soundtrack, the writer (the creator of the song) gets paid royalties. For most direct selling distributors, this provides comfortable extra income. For others who spend more time building their business, their residual income continues to grow, often with no boundaries. In direct selling, your business can be as little or as big as you want. You’re in control. So, no one is looking over your shoulder or making you keep a time sheet. If you want it to be a part-time job to supplement your income, or if you have the goal of it altogether replacing your main income, the opportunity is there for you to build your business at a pace that’s comfortable for you. At its core, network marketing is about people. Many distributors host parties to introduce potential enrollees to new products and the business. This can create a fun atmosphere that does not require a professional salesperson in order to be successful. You also create a strong network full of support from others who are there to help each other build their businesses. This gives everyone much more potential to succeed. In network marketing, you’re in business for yourself, but not by yourself. Leveraging hard work and the entrepreneurial spirit is what this unique business model is all about. Like any opportunity, though, owning a direct selling business isn’t effortless. But it is simple, and it can create wealth for those who choose to pursue the opportunity. A Better Quality of Life While many entrepreneurs choose to own a direct selling business because they are ready to take control of their lives, most soon discover it’s the superb quality of life that keeps them forging ahead. Taking a walk in the park, shopping in the middle of the afternoon, catching a late-night movie—there are plenty of simple ways to improve your quality of life. It’s about choosing what to do with your time, rather than being on an employer’s schedule. Direct selling allows you to schedule your work hours around family priorities—to choose your priorities and live your values. SfH VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 17

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BOOK

SHELF

The Secret Wh Great Leaders What Know—And Do Kno by Ken Ke Blanchard Set as a parable about Debbie, Se leader who ﬁnds a struggling str herself losing ground due to poor herse performance, this book traces her perfo journey to ﬁnd the answer to one journ question, “What is the secret of ques great leaders?” She is convinced that her mentor will tell her, she can if he apply the secret in her leadership. Over the next 18 months, Debbie’s mentor explains that the secret is men

Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill

Small Is the New Big and 183 Other Riffs, Rants, and Remarkable Business Ideas

rooted in an attitude. He tells her that she must be willing to become a serving leader rather than a self-serving leader. The secret is that all great leaders serve. Esteemed author of The One Minute Manager, Ken Blanchard explains there are ﬁve practices that all great leaders have in common. These ﬁve practices, combined with the underlying motivation to serve those they lead, is the secret of great leaders. (Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc., 2007 and 2009)

You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader by Mark Sanborn

by Seth Godin

Who Moved My Cheese: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change at Work and in Your Life by Spencer Johnson

Think and Grow Rich, based on the author’s famed Law of Success, represents the distilled wisdom of distinguished men of great wealth and achievement. Andrew Carnegie’s magic formula for success was the direct inspiration for this book. This book will teach you his secret—and the secrets of other great men like him (Publisher: Random House Publishing Group, 1987)

Godin has outdone himself again. Combining pieces from his popular blog with his Fast Company magazine column, he puts running a business in perspective with a tell-it-like-it-is attitude. He supplies motivation by telling you everything you already know about running a successful business but don’t want to hear. For example, if your business fails, it’s no one’s fault but your own. (Publisher: Portfolio Hardcover, 2006)

How Anyone, Anywhere Can Make a Positive Difference is the subtitle of this powerful pocket-sized book. Sanborn shows that genuine leadership is demonstrated through everyday actions and by the way we inﬂuence those around us. The six principles of leadership are taught through engaging, real-life situations. (Publisher: WaterBrook Press, 2007)

From Spencer Johnson, one of the world’s acknowledged experts on management, comes a charming parable filled with insights designed to help readers manage change quickly and prevail in changing times. It follows four fictional characters, Sniff, Scurry, Hem and Haw, as they search for fulfillment in the maze of life. (Publisher: Penguin Group, 1998)

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ADVISOR

PAUL ZANE PILZER Paul Zane Pilzer is a world-renowned economist, multimillionaire entrepreneur, college professor and author of eight best-selling books. Widely regarded as a leading predictor of economic catalysts and trends, Pilzer has served as an economic advisor to two U.S. presidents. He has started several entrepreneurial businessesâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;earning his fi rst million before age 26 and his fi rst $10 million before age 30.

The Age of the Entrepreneur This rise of the giant corporations is rapidly slipping into the history books as we return to our entrepreneurial roots. by Paul Zane Pilzer

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ADVISOR

PAUL ZANE PILZER

he traditional wisdom in the second half of the 20th century was this: Go to school, get a good education and go to work for a good company. The idea of “going into business for yourself” was most often regarded as risky. Admirable, perhaps, but risky… and maybe a little crazy. To d a y, i t ’s c o m p l e t e l y t h e o t h e r way around. Today, it’s risky to work for a corporation! Today, it’s far more sensible to go to work for yourself. We’re in the midst of a boom in homebased businesses, and it shows no sign of slowing. More than one out of every eight U.S. households contains a home-based business. Let’s look at some of the major reasons why the entrepreneur and home-based businessperson have the edge today. New legislation and new technology have caught up with a shift in values: People want to stay home, and now they can. In fact, now people who work from home have the edge!

The Technological Edge When I graduated from Wharton in 1976, I went to work at Citibank, but it wasn’t because I was interested in banking. I wanted access to the best technology, and I knew that Citibank had the biggest and best computers available. Back then, that was the only way to have access to the best technology. Computers were expensive mainframes owned and internally managed exclusively by large businesses, which gave these major corporations an enormous economic advantage. With the biggest and best computers, we decimated our competition at other banks that didn’t have the computers and were still using a paper-based banking system. Today, the opposite is the case. You’re more likely to ﬁnd the hottest and best new technology sitting on the desk of the individual entrepreneur’s home ofﬁce! The big companies just can’t innovate fast enough. Today, five of the 10 highest-valued companies in the U.S. stock market (Cisco, Microsoft, Intel, Oracle and Vodafone) are companies that didn’t exist 20 years ago, yet, today, their combined net worth exceeds 20

$1 trillion. What do they have in common? They are all third-party suppliers of affordable technologies to individual users. These leading-edge companies make tools that help the homebuilder build a home faster; tools that help home-based businesspeople communicate, run their businesses and distribute their products better. Remember, these are tools geared toward the individual, not toward some big mainframe computer. Go check out the computer at a typical big corporation today: You’ll generally ﬁnd computers that are 3, 4, 5 and 8 years old. Here is the edge the individual entrepreneur has over the large corporation: The entrepreneur has little or no bottleneck. The technology gap in a corporation is huge. Technology is changing more rapidly than ever, and in a large organization, it is a monumental challenge to ﬁgure out how to bring in and integrate an entirely new generation of technology.

In the ’70s and ’80s, the rule was, the bigger the company, the newer and better the technology. Today, the rule is, the bigger the company, the older and more out-of-date the technology! Today, technology is geared toward a fast-moving, highly adaptable business climate based on the personal, one-on-one transaction. As Dell Computers proved dramatically, it’s no longer economical to make one model and force everyone to use it. Now, it’s more economical to produce whatever customized models individual customers want! Tools and technology for the individual entrepreneur are now the best place to be: The best and brightest companies of the world realize that the growth of America is going to be in individual entrepreneurs and one-person or two-person businesses. The corporation has been decentralizing and

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dismantling itself, giving way to an environment of independent contractors, and the tool providers know it. They want to make the tools for the biggest market. And that’s the individual entrepreneur. Where are the greatest opportunities today? Even for people just starting, the best opportunities are not to go work for big companies (unless they’re the companies that make tools for individuals), but to go into business for themselves as entrepreneurs. Corporations Can’t Compete So much has changed since the days when I entered the work force 30 years ago. Back then, our employers told us, “We’ll always be around, and we’ll always take care of you. If you’re loyal to us, we’ll give you wonderful medical benefits and great retirement packages.” Year by year, we’ve seen all these bigcompany promises disappear into thin air. It’s not that they’re evil, or that they don’t want to keep offering the ideal work environment. It’s just that they can’t: They are going the way of the dinosaurs.

for someone else, when they could go into business for themselves and sell their skills directly to customers in the marketplace?” In other words, why do these big companies even exist, instead of millions and millions of self-employed entrepreneurs? As Coase studied this question in detail, he found that big companies existed because it was a far more efﬁcient way of doing business. The “transaction costs” of individuals doing business together who weren’t under one roof were so high—with transportation costs, telephone expenses, correspondence costs, postal delays, accounting and bookkeeping costs, and so on—that the expense would exceed their economic output. (All these transactions were quite labor-intensive; in the days of manual bookkeeping, for example, it often took as much as one accountant for every three workers simply to keep track of billing and payment and proper categorization of expenses.)

years later, in 1991, he won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his famous paper. But things have changed. Remember expensive long-distance telephone service? Ma nual double- entr y book keeping? Expensive overnight delivery? They’re all relics of the past. Today, thanks to advances in technology, all of these transaction costs have suddenly fallen to near zero. In fact, I recently revisited Professor Coase’s original equations using today’s data, and discovered that they now point to exactly the opposite conclusion: It is now so much more efﬁcient to work in very small units that many of our large organizations should no longer even exist. And that is exactly what we see happening: Today’s most important and most viable “corporations” are those that are going virtual. Much of the unemployment we experience today actually represents the permanent dismantling of many of our large corporations

Because of these enormous transaction costs, Coase predicted the rise of gigantic vertical corporations. His paper, The Nature of the Firm, became the standard work on the subject. Coase went on to become a professor at the University of Chicago; 60

as they are out-competed by smaller companies, independent contractors and other fast-adapting, quick-moving entrepreneurs. Individuals have debated leaving their jobs and becoming entrepreneurs since the ﬁrst large employers emerged in the 19th century.

It doesn’t matter how much money you earn if you never get to see your spouse or children. To understand why it’s now lumbering off into extinction, let’s take a quick look at how and why the huge corporation came to exist in the ﬁrst place. In 1931, an idealistic 21-year-old British college student named Ronald Coase won a scholarship to come study in the United States. A student of economics, he was quite excited to come to “the Land of the Entrepreneur,” the home of Horatio Alger, Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie, where anyone could start from scratch and build a great company. When he arrived, he found a land in the midst of the Great Depression, where everyone wanted a job with a company. “Why,” he wondered, “in such a great free market economy, in this land of opportunity, would workers voluntarily submit to working

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ADVISOR

PAUL ZANE PILZER

In the past, this debate has always focused on the opportunity and risk of going out on one’s own. Today, the real risk is staying with a large organization, because your job will probably be permanently dismantled within a few years. The Beneﬁts If you were a millionaire 20 years ago, chances are good the way you made your money was by building a business and then selling it. Why? Because, ordinary (vs. capital gains) income taxes were 70 and 80 percent, and the only people who could have pension funds, 401(k) plans and deferred savings accounts were people who worked for big companies. What’s more, the only people who could get healthcare coverage were those who worked for a big company. No longer.

Some critical changes have happened recently in U.S. tax laws (some of which I’m proud to say I had something to do with). These changes now make it possible for you to accumulate millions of dollars with ordinary cash flow from a home-based business, in ways that were not available to you before—if you know how to take advantage of them. Congress has finally created a level playing field for individual entrepreneurs by creating tax laws that make it possible for entrepreneurs to enjoy the same benefits of tax-free or tax-deferred savings as employees of corporations. One reason many people work for large organizations is for the medical and retirement benefits. From 1944 until 2005, employees of large companies enjoyed a 2-to-l or better tax advantage over individuals when it came to paying for benefits.

This was because: (1) Employees who get free or low-cost health benefits don’t have to pay income taxes on them; (2) Their employers are allowed a 100 percent tax deduction for health benefits they provide; and (3) the employees can defer paying taxes on contributions their employers make to their retirement plans. But now, individual entrepreneurs can actually get better health and retirement benefits than employees of large companies. The best health insurance available today for most families is an individual, rather than group, policy, because the premiums on an individual policy cannot generally be raised because of illness. And new Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) give individuals the same tax advantages as corporate employees. Since 2003, there have been individual health insurance policies that are both affordable and ta x-deductible for selfemployed people. Employees, on the other hand, typically are stuck with group plans for which the premiums are raised each year, based on the prior year’s claims. Such group plans are a ticking time bomb as the group ages. Most people think of Individual Retirement Accounts (IR As) as small, insignificant retirement accounts. However, beginning in 2005, a working couple can contribute $8,000 annually to an IRA, rising to $10,000 in 2008. IRAs not only allow all the benefits of a traditional corporate retirement plan, but they also allow tax-free early withdrawals at any age for life events such as a first-time home purchase or the payment of health insurance premiums while unemployed. If you have your own business, the retirement savings options are even better! With a self-employed retirement account, such as a SEP IRA, one-person 40l(k) or profit sharing plan, you can put away up to $41,000 per year—pretax —and become a millionaire in 15 years of working for yourself as an entrepreneur. You couldn’t do that before without working for a big company. Why did Congress change these laws and create such wonderful incentives? They had to. Today, more than 50 percent of

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Americans work either for themselves or for a small business. The Lifestyle In the new economy, the sheer quantity of compensation is no longer enough. More and more, we have come to realize that we also want a certain quality of compensation, too. We don’t simply want money, we want lifestyle. It doesn’t matter how much money you earn if you never get to see your spouse or children. It doesn’t matter how many physical possessions you have if you never get to play with them. And it doesn’t matter how great a personal economy you create if you don’t have the health to enjoy it. The concept of “quality of life,” which we take for granted today, is actually a fairly

recent invention, just a s is “customer ser· vice,” and for exactly the same reason: the advance of technology. Our economy and living standards have grown to the point where we not only expect to make a living (or complete a transaction), but we also expect to have the best possible experience living that life (or making the transaction). “Quality of life” is the same concept a s “g o o d c u s t o m e r service”—extended for our entire life span! This harks back to the fourth and ﬁfth laws of economic alchemy: Technology determines demand, and demand is without limit. Now we demand a quality of life that gives us not only survival, but also a dept h of me a ning and fulﬁllment. And here again, a corporate job simply can’t compete with self-employment. Make no mistake about it: When you start your own business, you’re going to put in the same hours as you did working for the corporation, if not more. But you get to control which hours. I work at home from a wireless laptop—in fact, I have a wireless laptop and wireless phone in every room of the house, so I’m free to go anywhere throughout my home and be “at work” anytime I want. I can spend an hour with my kids at breakfast, if that’s important to me. I can put my hours in after my kids are all asleep. I decide which hours I’m going to put in, rather than someone else arbitrarily deciding for me. We often talk about the challenge of keeping a balance between our work and our families.

Picture it like a seesaw, with work on one end and family on the other. When you’re constantly playing these priorities against each other, your life swings and swings until eventually the whole thing breaks, whether that means losing the job, losing the family or your health breaking down. But if we are fortunate enough to ﬁnd a way to integrate our work into our home, then we don’t have to think about balance between work and family so much as how we can weave the two together. When I was young, my father ran a small bedspread-manufacturing business with eight to 10 employees. The business was his life. He worked all day and talked about it every night at dinner. We kids worked for him on weekends. As I look back, now I realize that the happiest moments of my father’s life were during the brief times that he had all three of his sons working with him in his business. I think the loneliest businesspeople I see today are those whose children have no idea what they do. If you are able to teach your children what it is you do, what it is that they are economically dependent upon, and, even better, if they can actually see you doing it and even participate in some meaningful way, then this destructive and alienating rift between work and home starts to dissolve.

Today, it’s risky to work for a corporation! Today, it’s far more sensible to go to work for yourself. There is actually something ironic about this. The United States started out as an agrarian nation of entrepreneurs where everyone was a small-business person. The rise of the giant corporation, which my generation took for granted as the “normal” employment path, is really a historical anomaly. And it’s rapidly slipping into the history books as we return to our entrepreneurial roots. SfH For more information visit www.PauIZanePilzer.com

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Saying NO to Chronic Stress Modern life can be exhausting and pressure-packed, but it is possible to reverse fatigue, combat chronic stress and start thriving today. by Liz Davis

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Saying NO to Chronic Stress

en years ago, energy drinks were just beginning to make their way into convenience store coolers. Today, the energy drink market is booming, having experienced explosive growth in the years since then. In a 2007 study, the Beverage Marketing Corporation reported that in 2006 alone energy drink sales exploded by nearly 50 percent. Exactly what is behind the ever-expanding market share of these hyper-caffeinated, sometimes super-sugary drinks? Why do we love them so much? That’s an easy answer: As a culture, we’re tired, stressed and depressed. These energy drinks are just one of the quick fi xes we reach for to help us meet the demands of modern life. We have work pressures, family pressures, financial pressures and social pressures. We’re overweight, over-scheduled and under-rested. We can’t seem to find the time or the energy to exercise. We get pounding headaches far too often. We eat for convenience and comfort, rather than for nutrition. Some of us go the other direction, skipping breakfast and forgetting to eat until we’re irritable and malnourished. Some of us smoke. We may even drink too much alcohol to help us “relax” at the end of days that are too often crammed to the brim with meetings, traffic, bills, e-mail, child care, homework and other obligations. The Centers for Disease Control’s Health, United States, 2008 report paints a bleak picture, stating that a full third of American adults are now obese. The National Institutes of Health report that

one in 13 American adults is depressed, and that an estimated 16.5 million Americans experienced at least one bout of major depression last year. Is it any wonder we’re all reaching for the immediate results we can get from coffee, energy drinks, sleep aids, mood-enhancers, diet drugs and antidepressants? At best, these products can give us the occasional quick boost on a particularly demanding day, or during a rough life patch when we’re dealing with a lot of extra challenges. At worst, these fast ﬁ xes don’t really ﬁx anything; they’re just daily crutches that mask the symptoms of stress and fatigue, without addressing the actual problems.

Chronic stress is a modern epidemic, with potentially catastrophic consequences for individual health and happiness. How We Got This Way As recently as 50 years ago, life was quite a bit simpler than it is today. The pace of each day was more manageable, and we didn’t have such crowded schedules. Sure, we didn’t have iPhones, but we did have a lot more downtime. When did things get so complicated? Technology and urbanization are two major sources of the serious speeding up we’ve seen in the pace of life over the last few decades. The Internet, television, movies, increasingly advanced and entertaining cell phones, advertisements, video games, and trends: All these technological wonders add up to create a steady stream of noise that demands our attention. We have more things to do, products to buy, goals to accomplish and concerns to worry about than we once did. All the options and improvements that modern life offers certainly have the potential to enrich our lives, but not without the price of things getting much more complicated.

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Populations are also growing, and we’re living closer and closer together while trying to maximize resources. We’re worried about money; we may struggle to pay our bills and debts. We commute long distances to work long hours, which alienates us from family, friends, fun and the normal rhythms of a healthy life. In some cases, we’ve also taken the admirable desire for success and twisted it into some pretty unrealistic expectations of ourselves. We’re overwhelmed by our to-do lists.

to stress-inducing stimuli, but some of the most common symptoms of chronic stress include: Weight gain, particularly around the midsection due to the stress hormone, cortisol Weight loss, malnutrition Digestive system changes Fatigue, low energy, lack of vitality High blood pressure Decreased immune system response, increased susceptibility to infection Headaches, muscle pain, muscle weakness Substance abuse Depression Anxiety and panic Isolation from friends and loved ones Irritability, anger, negativity Difficulty concentrating Disrupted sleep patterns A nd these symptoms are just the beginning. When it continues unchecked in the longer term, chronic stress can be a causal factor in dozens of deadly health problems, from physical problems, like heart disease and diabetes, to mental and emotional consequences, like depression. Chronic stress has even been shown to cause structural changes in the brains of rats. In a study published in the journal Science in July 2009, researchers reported that chronic stress may cause permanent changes in the brain that affect decision making, rendering the chronically stressed less and less able to be flexible and to identify different behavioral strategies that might produce better results in a given situation. Chronic stress is a modern epidemic, with potentially catastrophic consequences for individual health and happiness. It is possible to reverse the effects of chronic stress and to live in a more balanced, fulfilling way. But, before we can root out the causes of stress, we have to gain an understanding of its natural purpose.

How We Experience Stress Taken together, all these demands and distractions create a perfect storm of chronic stress, a threefold problem that creates physical, mental and emotional breakdown. Each person responds differently

A Normal Process Gone Haywire It may surprise you to find out that stress is not, in and of itself, a negative thing. Stress is actually a normal, natural, hardwired response to events or circumstances that are perceived VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 27

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Saying NO to Chronic Stress as threatening or dangerous. Th The stress response iis a protective ti mechanism. Whether the stress stimulus mulu is reall or imaginedd doesn’t do matter. If a person perceives stress, the body’s natural defenses are activated. This is called the stress response, also known as the “fight-or-flight” response. We’ve all heard at least one friend or co-worker say, “I work really well under pressure.” This phenomenon actually has a basis in science. The stress response enables us to rise to the occasion and meet mental, physical and emotional challenges. The mind clears and becomes ready to make quick decisions, and the body becomes ready to run away, to fight off a threat or to do whatever is necessary to protect oneself or others. Vision and hearing become more acute, and adrenaline floods the system. This is the amazing, adaptive response that has enabled people to perform seemingly superhuman feats of strength, like lifting a car off of a trapped loved one. So then, what’s the problem with stress? Well, rarely in modern life is the perceived threat something that would require us to run away or fight off a physical threat. The stress response is also designed to regulate itself so that after the perceived threat has passed, the body returns to its normal state of calm. This doesn’t happen with chronic stress. Pressures are constant, so the stress response remains constant, and it starts to work against us rather than for us. D r. S h a w n Ta l b o t t , a n u t r i t ion a l bio chemist , editor in chief of SupplementWatch.com a nd aut hor of eight books on health topics, says that, at this point, physiological changes start to occur. “In individuals who are under chronic stress, testosterone levels go down and cortisol levels go up. When these two hormones dissociate, we start to see the classic symptoms of metabolic imbalance, casually known as burnout: fatigue, depression and poor mental function,” Dr. Talbott says. Bringing these hormones back into their proper balance is a key component in relieving chronic stress. The good news is that the brain and body can be rewired for health, happiness and balance. And although the shift away from stress may be tricky to navigate at first, our health-seeking momentum will build quickly. Before long, the balance habit will be firmly in place.

and balance. Remember those stress h hormones we talked about b l R h t b t earlier? Dr. research has him to somee exciting ea r Talbott’s Ta rese as directed d ex discoveries about plant extracts that can help to reduce the effects of stress hormones on the body and mind, and may even be able to compensate for genetic predispositions to higher levels of stress hormones. Some people are genetically conditioned to have higher levels of hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (HSD), an enzyme that makes cortisol more available to do its damage by making us hungry, fat and sick. This can be true even for some folks who are doing everything else right, lifestyle-wise. Orange-peel extract has been found to contain chemicals called polymethoxylated flavones (PMFs), flavonoids that can reduce HSD, thereby reducing levels of damaging cortisol. Remember the other key component in metabolic imbalance, testosterone? A plant called Eurycoma longifolia seems to contain the key to optimal testosterone levels. This flowering medicinal plant has long been used in Malaysia and other parts of Southeast Asia as a vigor-increasing traditional medicine tonic, and for good reason.

Getting Out of the Stress Loop Although breaking that pesky stress habit is never as simple as popping a single, cure-all pill, there are some speciﬁc (and scientific) ways to jump-start vigor and prime the body and mind for greater health

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We all want to be balanced, relaxed, calm and happy. Instinctively, we know there has to be a better way to live. Scientiﬁc investigation of the plant has revealed that its primary beneﬁt to humans is in making the body’s existing testosterone more available to cells in the body, without actually stimulating the body to produce more testosterone. For a person under chronic stress,

more bioavailable testosterone means you feell better, stronger and l t t b moree vigorous. vig Now that we’ve identified some simple steps we can take to bring stress hormones back into balance, what else can we do? Increasing our consumption of superfoods (antioxidant-rich foods, juices and supplements) is another surefire way to reverse cellular damage from stress, pollution and aging. Mangosteen juice, pomegranate juice, blueberries, raspberries, prunes, artichokes, red beans and walnuts score high when it comes to antioxidant content. In addition to a stress-busting healthful diet and a commitment to regular exercise—the two pillars of a balanced lifestyle—there’s much more we can do to start busting the stress habit, a little bit at a time. We can: Get enough sleep, no matter what. Cutting back on sleep may free up some time in the short term, but, in the long run, we’ll accomplish more—while feeling better—if we get adequate rest. Simplify, be realistic and learn to say no. We can drop those commitments that add unnecessary stress to our lives and not take on new ones. Take one action at a time. Multitasking tends to lower productivity and concentration. We can focus on what’s right in front of us and move on calmly to the next task Communicate with someone we trust on a regular basis. Talking things over with a friend or a loved one is vital to emotional health. Schedule time to have fun and relax at least once a week. If that sounds impossible, we’re overbooked and could really benefit from some downtime. Cultivate self-awareness. We can learn what stress looks like for us and come up with a list of things we can do to nip it in the bud. Unlearn worry. Worry is a maladaptive habit that accomplishes nothing. We can either take some positive action to alleviate the worrisome situation or turn our minds in another direction. Chronic stress is seriously destructive, and it’s rapidly compromising the health and happiness of individuals, families and whole societies. What’s more, chronic stress works against our deepest human instincts to survive, thrive and make something of ourselves. We all want to feel vigorous, excited about life and equipped to meet its challenges. We all want to be balanced, relaxed, calm and happy. Instinctively, we know there has to be a better way to live. Reducing the causes and minimizing the effects of chronic stress takes some work and willingness. Forming new habits (proper diet, exercise, sleep and work behaviors) requires a real commitment to change, one step at a time—we didn’t form the stress habit overnight. So much of stress is about perception, mental outlook and willingness to take the action to change destructive habits, even though it’s not easy at first. And although there are many things we can do to combat the physical causes and effects of stress, the first and last frontier in the battle against the stress monster will always be the mind. SfH VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 29

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Category Creator C The he

Pioneers in the field of green chemistry, XanGo products continue to chart the course of the health and wellness market. by Deana Nall

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s the first company to market a

premium mangosteen beverage to consumers worldwide, XanGo established itself as a “category creator” in the health and wellness market. But XanGo hasn’t stopped there. XanGo continues to develop new category-creating products that keep transforming the wellness landscape. Studied by scientists for decades, the whole rind of the mangosteen has been found to deliver beneﬁts far superior to chemical extracts from the same rind.

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Research on the whole-food mangosteen is ongoing, but XanGo knows this: To benefit from the complete power and nutritional impact of the mangosteen fruit, it should be consumed just as it has been for more than a thousand years—in its whole-fruit form. Because of its ability to maximize nutritional beneﬁts, this wholefood philosophy is at the root of several XanGo products.

‘We really want people to live life as it should be lived.’ One of the company’s most recent category creators is Eleviv™, a dietary supplement formulated to help naturally restore the body’s balance. “We really want people to live life as it should be lived,” says Beverly Hollister, senior vice president of business development for XanGo. Because of fast-paced, harried lifestyles, many Americans live with chronic stress. And this problem isn’t limited to the United States. In most developed countries, one in three doctor visits is for something related to chronic stress, says Larry Macfarlane, XanGo chief marketing ofﬁcer. “When we always operate in crisis mode, our bodies never have a chance to properly recover from stress,” he says. “Inside our bodies, this creates a continuous stress response. Over time, our bodies stabilize in a very unhealthy state.” To combat chronic stress and the resulting fatigue, many people turn to quick ﬁ xes, such as energy drinks, to cope. These products are high in sugar and don’t do anything toward restoring the body’s balance. “Eleviv supplies a long-term solution that is so much healthier long term,” Hollister says. ‘Eleviv empowers people instead of masking a problem.’ Eleviv supports natural vigor, which is a scientific term that describes a balanced state of physical energy, mental acuity and emotional well-being, Macfarlane says. Vigor really is “wellness” in the broadest possible sense. People who feel good—physically, mentally and emotionally—have vigor. When vigor is low, people tend to spiral down into feeling tired, stressed and depressed.

Formulated to stand alongside XanGo ® Juice, the company’s flagship product, Eleviv is a scientifically studied blend of four proven ingredients precisely formulated to restore the body’s natural balance. The unique and exclusive botanical ingredient blend of Eurycoma longifolia, citrus-peel extract, green tea extract and pharmaceuticalgrade L-Theanine helps to provide the much-needed balance the body needs. What’s more, Eleviv works without unnecessary caffeine, sugars and other stimulants already so common in our everyday lives. “Eleviv empowers people instead of masking a problem,” Hollister says. “It supplies a long-term solution that is so much healthier—a solution that helps our bodies replenish themselves.” “Eleviv doesn’t feel like an energy drink,” Macfarlane says. Energy drinks, loaded with caffeine and sugar, create a quick, temporary burst of energy. Because it’s a more natural product, Eleviv consumers don’t experience a sudden change. But after three or four days, they begin to notice a difference, Macfarlane says. “After three weeks or so, people tell us they have more energy in the mornings, they are staying on their diets, they are exercising and getting along better with family members and co-workers,” he says. Instead of reacting to stress in unhealthy ways, they are rolling with stress and dealing with it in a healthier way. “Energy drinks trick vigor,” he says. “Eleviv actually provides longterm results.” The supplement also provides a functional aspect, Hollister says. “Some people have trouble swallowing pills,” she says. “Eleviv capsules are small and easy to swallow. And you know you are getting something from a pure and natural source.” “Pure and natural” has been XanGo’s running theme since the company began. And when XanGo Juice first appeared on the market, it earned XanGo the nickname “the mangosteen company.” “XanGo Juice was the first to use the mangosteen,” Macfarlane says. “And it was the first to taste good.” Macfarlane and Hollister acknowledge the presence of a number of juices on the health and wellness market—some featuring mangosteen. But they are quick to identify what makes XanGo stand out: While other brands use mangosteen extracts and add high amounts of sugar, XanGo clings to its whole-food philosophy. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 33

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‘We purée the whole mangosteen, so we’re getting all these xanthones that assist the body in their natural state.’ And XanGo takes the processing of the mangosteen very seriously. After harvest, mangosteen fruit undergoes a proprietary process that washes and softens the rind. At the same time, pre-shipped mangosteen samples are tested and approved before the harvest is accepted and prepared for the production process. Fruit that meets strict quality guidelines is then submitted to a three-stage purée process to preserve ﬂavor and nutritional integrity. To meet impressive demand and secure a fresh ﬁnal product, XanGo Juice is formulated and manufactured daily. “We use the whole fruit,” Macfarlane says. “We purée the whole mangosteen, so we’re getting all these xanthones that assist the body in their natural state.” Eleviv and XanGo Juice, together, create a synergy. W hile XanGo Juice provides antioxidant function, Eleviv provides metabolic balance. Together, they help create a true circle of health and wellness.

”We really want people to live life as it should be lived.” — Beverly Hollister, XanGo Senior VP of Business Development

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“The juice and Eleviv address core areas that are essential to maintaining balanced health,” Macfarlane says. XanGo Juice and Eleviv are great for the inside of the body, but what about the outside? Skin care is an area that XanGo has not overlooked. Glimpse Intuitive Skin Care is yet another category-creating line of products designed to deliver pure and natural anti-aging beneﬁts to the skin. “The American Academy of Dermatologists has said we need antioxidants topically as well as internally,” Hollister says. “XanGo has

worked with Ph.D.s in Japan to formulate a mangosteen fermentation process into a topical form.” The result is Glimpse, a topical skin nutrition system that features self-adjusting formulas to address the skin’s ever-changing needs. By adhering to its whole-food philosophy, XanGo has explored the whole mangosteen fruit and has derived the ﬁnest and most potent xanthone-rich ingredients. The resulting proprietary blend is exclusive to Glimpse Skin Care and is known as BioActive X 3 Complex™. This patent-pending complex is enhanced with mangosteen-infused water, biofermentation and cold-processing to preserve and amplify the potent phytonutrients found in mangosteen.

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“Right now, we’re in a really exciting time in the skincare industry,” says Misha Hughes, a renowned skincare expert who helped develop Glimpse Skin Care. “We have a much better understanding of how the skin works.” The BioActive X 3 Complex is comprised of three exclusive xanthone-rich ingredients derived from deep within the mangosteen’s nutrient-dense pericarp. The mangosteen pericarp—or the part of the fruit that surrounds the fruit or seeds, also known as the skin or rind—is not commonly thrown away as one might toss, say, the peel of an orange. In fact, the pericarp is what has traditionally housed

“Eleviv empowers people instead of masking a problem.” — Beverly Hollister

the fruit’s numerous beneficial properties. In Glimpse products, the pericarp oil offers the highest concentration of xanthones and a host of vital phytonutrients, soothes and calms signs of infl ammation, stimulates collagen production, and supports firm, youthful and luminous skin. “The pericarp oil is incredible at controlling infl ammation, which is the cause of premature aging,” says Hughes, a paramedical master aesthetician. The polymeric complex provides the highest antioxidant potency and forms a chain of continuous phytonutrients that safeguards the skin from environmental stressors. It also helps reveal a brighter, more radiant and youngerlooking complexion.

“It’s an extremely powerful antioxidant,” Hughes says. The acidic complex combines the fi nest elements from the mangosteen fruit in a botanical-based acidic complex. It reinforces the skin’s natural defenses and helps maintain clearer, fresher and healthier-looking skin. “We knew we had to create formulas that centered around these extracts to provide balanced, optimal skin nutrition,” Hughes says. “The BioActive X 3 Complex is a well-rounded formula designed to support your skin.” While many products begin with a simple water base, Glimpse’s starting point is mangosteen-infused water. This process entails steeping (like a tea bag in water) mangosteen pericarp powder into USP-grade purified water. This allows for t he tra nsfer of ma ngosteen’s powerful phytonutrients into the fi rst ingredient and base of each formula. Each step in making Glimpse involves the meticulous use of time-honored techniques combined with modern science. Traditional use of the mangosteen in Southeast Asia over the past several centuries refers to the mangosteen pericarp being steeped in water and blended overnight into a tea. This tea was then sipped to nourish internally, as well as applied externally to nourish the skin. Honoring this tradition, Glimpse steeps the mangosteen pericarp in 100 percent pure water, forming a nutrient-dense mangosteen water base. Exclusive to Glimpse, this mangosteen water base amplifi es the overall phytonutrient benefi ts of the fruit and acts as a nutrient-rich courier that, when fused with the BioActive X 3 Complex, helps to significantly enhance skin nutrition. “What you put into your body is critically important to your skin,” Hughes says. “We now know how important it is to control infl ammation in the skin because it causes premature aging. Ingredients in some products actually cause infl ammation in the skin.” One culprit is synthetic fragrance, which Hughes says is one of the most-used irritants in the United States. Another is the heavy use of preservatives. Hughes especially cautions against products that boast a long shelf life, such as three to fi ve years. This is a sign that the products are loaded with preservatives. “ We have worked hard to be ver y selective in our preservative system,” Hughes says. “From the inception of the Glimpse skincare line, we had the commitment to keep it safe. It was also vitally important to us to have a good product that also produced good results.” Macfarlane commented on the amount of work that went in to developing Glimpse.

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“It is particularly challenging to make a product that is natural and safe,” he says. “Glimpse is a very high-end product. It’s extremely active. You can feel it working.” Hughes also cautions against products that contain chemicals and toxic ingredients. Not only are they bad for the skin, but they also harm the environment. “A lot of those ingredients don’t break down in the environment,” she says. With 95 percent of Glimpse’s ingredients taken from a natural source, consumers can rest assured that they are using the best ingredients nature has to offer. “And it’s safe for the environment,” Hollister adds. XanGo has gone a step further in its stand for pure and natural products by signing the Compact for Safe Cosmetics. The Campaign for Safe Cosmetics is a national coalition of nonproﬁt health and environmental organizations. The organization’s goal is to protect the health of consumers and workers by requiring the personal

care products industry to phase out use of chemicals linked to cancer, birth defects and other serious health concerns, and to replace them with safer alternatives. By signing the campaign’s Compact for Safe Cosmetics, manufacturers are pledging to make safer products and promising a greater transparency to the public about their products. “It’s basically a pledge to do no harm,” Hollister says. “So many products are not healthy. XanGo is taking a lead in manufacturing safe products.” Because of XanGo’s commitment to following strict greenchemistry standards by signing the compact, consumers can know they are getting performance-based skin nutrition without the use of harmful toxins. The latest addition to XanGo’s impressive product lineup is Jüni™, a line of hair care and body care products. Taking a word that means “blessed” in the Chinese language, XanGo created Jüni to bless families with safe and cost-effective shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, body wash and bar, Macfarlane says. “Everyone has shampoo, conditioner and body care products in their home,” Macfarlane says. “But I’d challenge anyone to pronounce the ingredients in them!”

‘We wanted products that a mother wouldn’t have to worry about.’ Instead of potentially harmful ingredients, Jüni products contain mangosteen amino acids that protect the body from exposure to toxic chemicals in other products. And the products are priced in a way that appeals to today’s economyminded families. “Jüni products are formulated to be a low-cost option to help families participate in wellness,” Macfarlane says. Jüni also takes the worry out of providing safe hair care and body care products for families. “We wanted products that a mother wouldn’t have to worry about,” Hollister says. “Jüni is meant to bless the family.” Gentle enough for even babies to use, the Jüni body care line carries on the pure and natural XanGo tradition that can be traced back to XanGo co-founder Joe Morton, whose mother owned a health food store and wouldn’t give her children anything that wasn’t natural. XanGo has a strong commitment to keeping their products safe and natural, but VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 37

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“We purée the whole mangosteen, so we’re getting all these xanthones that assist the body in their natural state.” —Larry Macfarlane, XanGo Chief Marketing Officer

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the company is also committed to making these products available to everyone. “For many people, the thought of expensive products can be a concern,” Macfarlane says. “Jüni is a great, cost-effective solution.” Hughes also stresses the need for everyone to have access to clean body care formulas. “It’s never too early to be thoughtful of what you’re putting in your body, what you’re putting on your body and what you’re releasing into the environment,” Hughes says. “Jüni products are safe and natural, and the fact that they’re cost-effective makes them available to everyone.” XanGo’s progress in the area of safe, natural and environmentally friendly chemistry is a testament to their commitment and vision, Hughes says. “I’m very excited that XanGo has taken the approach to be pioneers in this area,” she says. “I can’t say enough about their commitment to furthering green chemistry.” XanGo’s corporate leaders and distributors know their products are safe, natural and effective, and the company has the science to back it up. XanGo’s products have undergone clinical research, the results of which are viewable at www.xango.com. Several human clinical trials have been conducted on Eleviv, and the results have consistently shown signiﬁcant balance in all measure of vigor.

One clinical Eleviv test revealed improvement in subjective stress and global mood state. Another test showed an 82 percent improvement in vigor score in just seven days. The anti-inflammatory effect of XanGo Juice on overweight persons with inflammation was shown in a double-blind, placebo-controlled, human clinical test. In this clinical, XanGo Juice was shown to reduce certain parameters of inflammation as well as improve weight and body fat in an overweight population. The test also demonstrated an ability to reduce inflammation at three different dosage levels while test subjects in the placebo group actually experienced a small increase in the amount of inflammation. And the mangosteen-infused water in Glimpse products has been shown in third-party in-vitro analysis to host concentrated amounts of xanthones, proanthocyanidins, catechins and other vital phytonutrients. This analysis shows that the use of Glimpse products results in optimal skin benefits from mangosteen with mangosteeninfused water. With a whole-food philosophy and commitment to products that are safe to use, as well as good for the environment—and with the science to back it up—XanGo products prove that centuries-old nutrition can pave the way into the future of the health and wellness market. “Our products are formulated for everyone—men and women, young and old,” Macfarlane says. “We’re really making a difference.” SfH VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 39

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Leaders Achievers These leaders and

achievers are making their financial and life goals a reality with

XanGo.

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Photography by George Frey

Leaders & Achievers

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Dwayne Dyer 200K Premier Select Utah

Key to Success If you’ll work for the next 30 days like your life depended on it, you can change your future forever.

Out of His Comfort Zone by Carla Diebold

Dwayne Dyer occasionally chooses to get out of his comfort zone. He took flying lessons, for instance, even though he has a fear of heights. As is customary, once a pilot completes his first solo flight, his shirttail is cut off, signed, dated and hung up for display. Dwayne chose to donate his first XanGo shirt to the cause. A symbolic gesture, since Dwayne’s 2002 decision to join XanGo also knocked him out of his comfort arena. Dwayne had spent his career moving up the corporate ladder. When he learned about the XanGo opportunity, Dwayne was smack in the lap of corporate life as a homeoffice executive at an established network marketing company. He had the money, benefits and status that accompanied his years of hard work. So why leave all this behind to pursue a distributorship with XanGo? “I get asked that question a lot,” Dwayne says. “I associated with distributors who were very successful financially and were living the dream. I earned a good income, too, but those distrib-

Dwayne flew to Utah, met with the founders and liked what they offered. utors enjoyed more of a life than I was living at the time. I thought, ‘If the right business opportunity ever comes along, I’m going to keep my eyes open for it.’ ” Leaving Comfort Behind When the right opportunity came along, Dwayne almost missed it. Although he knew and trusted Founder and Board Member Gordon Morton, Dwayne’s children were in college at the time and he had a terriﬁc position at the other company.

Dwayne and Melody Dyer see the future they always wanted.

Melody, Dwayne’s wife of 30 years, urged him to take another look. Dwayne flew to Utah, met with the founders and liked what they offered. He joined and never looked back. Well, except to maybe panic a little. “I thought, ‘Wow, what have I done?’ ” Dwayne says. “ ‘I’ve killed my corporate career to become a distributor. I have to make this work!’ ” Work Is a Four-Letter Word And make it work he did. When problems arose, Dwayne chose to always become part of the solution. “When it comes to work ethic, I’m really high on that,” Dwayne says. “Work is a four-letter word and none of us want to hear it. But that’s what it takes: work, persistence and integrity.” Dwayne’s sense of integrity was a trait picked up from his father, a small-business

owner. “My dad is as honest as the day is long,” Dwayne says. “I think if you have integrity, somehow things work out OK for you in the business world,” Dwayne says. Dwayne likes to mingle with distributors and has visited all the countries where XanGo is represented. At home, Dwayne organizes XanGo motorbike tours called Bottles and Throttles. The Dyers also host groups on their houseboat each year on Utah’s Lake Powell. Currently, most of the Dyers’ free time is spent with their new twin granddaughters, Avery and Isabella, who were born in July. They also spend a significant amount of time in Montana, where they have a cabin outﬁtted with an ofﬁce. Life, they’ll tell you, is very good. Sometimes the best course of action is to gaze beyond a known comfort zone to the possibilities of a happier realm ahead. SfH

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Leaders & Achievers

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Barbara King-Schmidt 200K Premier Select

Nevada

Key to Success Life is a do-it-to-yourself project.

Five Years Is a Lifetime by Deana Nall

When asked about the most important thing XanGo has provided her, Barbara King-Schmidt could answer many ways. She has a successful career marketing products she uses and believes in. But when Barbara thinks of the ﬁve extra years she was fortunate enough to spend with her late husband, Bob, her professional success fades into the background. Years ago, when the couple was running a successful network marketing business, Bob was diagnosed with a serious medical condition. He underwent aggressive treatments, and doctors advised him it’d be a long year of recovery. Meanwhile, the couple had learned about XanGo from a friend and started drinking XanGo® Juice. Neither one of them had ever heard of the mangosteen fruit, the juice’s key ingredient, but they were intrigued by what they had learned about it. And there was no th denying that once they drank the juice, they de just felt good. ju Life Is Too Short Li Now, the Schmidts were torn—they owned a great market share of their network ow marketing company and were understandm ably hesitant to leave it. But Bob’s health ab ordeal reminded them of one important or truth. “We realized life is too short,” Barbara tru says. “We loved the product so much that we sa knew it would be a great business decision kn as well.” Bob and Barbara let a few people know their former business might be up for sale th and had a cash buyer within two weeks. The an couple joined XanGo and never looked back. co W hen the Schmidts became part of XanGo in 2003, the company’s only product Xa was XanGo Juice. Since then, XanGo has wa introduced a family of products that have in

only made Barbara more thankful to be part of the compa ny. For inst a nce, XanGo 3SIXTY5 provides whole-food nutrition in two gender-specific formulas, and the Glimpse skin nutrition line offers nutrition from the outside-in. “It’s exciting to know that my own company is coming out with skincare products that are top-shelf!” Barbara says. Most recently, X a nGo launched Eleviv™, a supplement to XanGo Juice that naturally provides physical energy, mental acuity and emotional balance. “The p u n c h t o t h i s pro d u c t is that most people feel a difference in a few days,” she says. “Like the juice, these products just make you feel good.” Saying Goodbye Barbara and her son have a ball cooking together. Barbara feels good to Barbara now works the XanGo business have found XanGo when they did. Adding that she built with Bob alone. When they XanGo has given her something very special. worked as a team, he was a master trainer Bob passed away in May 2008, and Barbara and mentor to others in the company. Now continues working to build the legacy the Barbara has stepped into his responsibilities two of them began together. Bob had spent and has been able to grow more as a teacher. 38 years in the network marketing industry, “I really believe I can make a difference and he and Barbara were proud to not only that way,” she says. be involved in XanGo, but to be in the And when it comes to the future, Barbara industry itself. couldn’t be more optimistic. “The net work marketing industr y is “This product gave me back my husband about people,” Barbara says. “People in this and gave us five bonus years together,” industry are usually in it to make a differBarbara says. “This company is so dedicated. ence. I’m really proud to be a part of it and It’s all about being a better you.” SfH see how it’s evolved over the years.”

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Photography by Jon Moe

Leaders & Achievers

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Chris & Renae Peterson 200K Premier New York

Key to Success Be genuine and truly interested in people. Listen to see if our products, industry or company would be a good ﬁt for them.

Success in the City by Jennifer Workman Pitcock

Nine years ago, Chris Peterson was going to be a rock star. He and his wife, Renae, had their lives planned out. He played drums for a band that had just signed with a recording company. While Renae began her master’s degree in social work at Columbia University in New York, Chris would tour with the band. It was perfect—until everything fell apart. A New Direction When one member quit, Chris’s band lost their contract. Depressed, Chris wasn’t sure what to do next. Then a cousin introduced him to XanGo. Initially wary of network marketing, Chris studied the industry for almost six months. “I discovered direct selling was a great business model. And XanGo combined all the characteristics of the most successful network marketing companies,” Chris says. Chris and Renae started building their XanGo business in 2003, but success didn’t come overnight. Their first check from XanGo was just $40. About a year later, they began seeing ﬁ ve-ﬁ gure checks each month. “I’ve seen a lot of other people’s organizations grow faster,” Chris says. “We’re extremely selective. We look for people who have the qualities and characteristics that allow them to do really well in this industry.” Members of XanGo’s Millionaires Club, Chris and Renae’s team currently boasts more than 50,000 distributors and customers in about 30 countries worldwide. The level of their success hit home for Renae one day when Chris called her into his office and showed her a commission check from XanGo. “We’d earned more in a month than I earned in a year as a full-time social worker,” she says.

Sold on XanGo X a n G o ’s b u s i n e s s oppor t u nit y init ia lly drew Chris to the company, but the products have turned both Chris and Renae into tr ue believers. Since Renae began drinking XanGo ® Juice six years ago, she’s felt some relief from her severe allergies and accompanying sinus infections. Chris’s favorite product is Eleviv. With a 2-yearold toddler and a thriving home-based business, Chris developed the habit Chris and Renae with son Gunnar, 2. of drinking Red Bull to combat stress and exhaustion. “I knew it wasn’t For Chris and Renae, though, the most good for me. But it helped me focus and gave important thing XanGo provides is freedom me energy. This year, my New Year’s resolution to spend time with their son, Gunnar, and to was to quit caffeine,” Chris says. “I did, but it make a difference in the community. Renae was rough.” still works part time as a social worker. “I get In Eleviv, Chris found a healthy alternative to do what I love. It doesn’t matter that after to highly caffeinated energy drinks. “Within taking a taxi to work and paying a baby sitter two weeks, Eleviv changed my life. I could I don’t make a dime,” she says. focus, I didn’t get tired and I was sleeping Both Renae and Chris mentor at-risk better,” he says. children in Harlem, teaching them to set goals and achieve them. “Every year, we ﬂy those who achieve their goals to a private Loving Life lake house in Washington. We teach them The Petersons feel blessed by the lifestyle how to water-ski. We tube, play tennis and XanGo affords them. They love living in New ride motorcycles,” Chris says. “Now, a few of York, where there are plenty of opportunities the kids we’ve mentored are going to college. to indulge their shared passion for music and It’s been fun to be part of that.” their love of city life. “A couple of years ago, “XanGo allows us to give back to the we purchased a penthouse here,” Chris says. community,” Renae says. “We can help “You can see Central Park from our private at-risk kids without worrying about how terrace on the roof. The elevator opens right we’re going to pay the bills.” SfH into our foyer.”

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Photos by McIntyre Photography

Leaders & Achievers

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Priscilla & Jim Harrison 200K Premier Select North Carolina

Key to Success What you think about comes about.

A Life Measured by Donation, Not Duration by David Lee

Priscilla Harrison grew up around sickness. When she was in the fifth grade, her mother was diagnosed with cancer and was given six months to live. She survived for another 17 years. “That imprinted on me the value of health,” Priscilla says of the years growing up helping her mom battle cancer and being in and out of hospitals. “When you grow up around sickness, you definitely know that, without your health, nothing else matters.” That appreciation for living a healthy lifestyle attracted Priscilla and her husband, Jim, to XanGo more than five years ago. Now running a full-time, 200K Premier Select business, the Harrisons are enjoying helping others build their own businesses. They’ve worked hard to build the life they always wanted, and they’ve come a long way from the crazy life they used to live. When Priscilla and Jim got married more than 30 years ago in Dallas, she was a dental hygienist and he was a pilot for an international airline. Life was great—until the airline industry was deregulated in the late 1970s and Jim’s airline filed for bankruptcy. “I’ve been scared to death twice in my life,” Priscilla says. “One was a health scare with my mother, and the second was a financial scare with the airlines. Both of those fears keep you up at night.” Those fears were also powerful motivators that would change their lives. Searching for Something Else Jim eventually landed another airline job in the Carolinas, but Priscilla kept her dental hygienist job in Dallas on a part-time basis. Flying back and forth, life was spread out and hectic. They needed to make a change. “This new philosophy of leveraging yourself and building teams of people through

network marketing became very appealing to me,” Priscilla says. Priscilla learned about network marketing on one of her many commuting flights, and actually built a successful and exciting business from that chance encounter. “I was ‘ignorance on fire,’ ” she says, “and it was fun!” Hello, XanGo Then, Mike and Linda McCarthy, whom Priscilla and Jim knew from their previous c o m p a n y, i nt ro d uc e d t h e H a r r i s o n s to XanGo. That was five and a half years ago. Now, the Harrisons are living the healthy and secure life of which they always dreamed. Their goal is to help people grow by teaching them the business, self-discipline, and how to be kind and patient with others. “If you can push ‘play’ on a DVD player and drink XanGo ® Juice, you can do this business,” Priscilla says of the simplicity of building a XanGo business. “The business shouldn’t be any harder than that because the tools are unbelievable.” Selling people on what the Harrisons believe are life-changing products is even easier, especially when they are integral parts of the couple’s life. “I take the products to maintain my health and my wellness,” Priscilla says. “They’re top-of-the-line.” Looking back on how their XanGo adventure started, the Harrisons couldn’t be more pleased. “From survival, it went to security,” Priscilla says, looking back on their path. “Then from security, it went to just living life at full-throttle. Now, it’s come back to where it is now, and that’s paying it forward.” Paying It Forward “One of my favorite quotations is, ‘Life should not be measured by its duration, but

Priscilla and Jim Harrison are discovering new hobbies and the joy of giving back.

by its donation.’ As you get older, you realize life is not about getting, but giving,” Jim says. “XanGo founders realized this from the very beginning.” The Harrisons’ passion is Operation Smile, which they were involved in before XanGo. Now, the children’s outreach program has been inducted into the umbrella of XanGo’s Goodness Foundation. “We want to travel on an Operation Smile trip with the company and see what we can do to help,” Priscilla says. The Harrisons are excited about the future and are currently working hard to reach the elite 500K status with XanGo. To get there, they know they have to help others achieve success, which makes the hard work even more worthwhile. SfH

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Photography by Stuart McCall

Leaders & Achievers

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Grace & Bob Dyck 200K Premier Select British Columbia, Canada

Key to Success We’re ordinary people who made a decision to live an extraordinary life. If we can do this, anyone can do it.

Living Extraordinarily by Nicole Bywater

The first time Grace and Bob Dyck tried XanGo® Juice, the bottle sat in their refrigerator for five months. “It pretty much lived between the ketchup and the salad dressing!” says Grace with a laugh. The couple, who are now top earners with XanGo, first heard about the company’s mangosteen juice when a family member brought it to dinner one evening. The Dycks tried it, but didn’t think there could actually be much nutritional benefit to “just a juice.” Dreaming of Success No strangers to the industry, Grace and Bob first tried network marketing in 1980 as a young married couple. Bob spent days working for his own construction business and the couple held networking meetings in the evenings. While their first company (and several more after) didn’t bring the Dycks much success, Bob always knew t hey would someday fi nd the right opportunity to be successful full time in the industry. Grace looked again at the business her uncle and two cousins were involved with, something called XanGo. She discovered that she knew four of the six company founders and made a call to one of them, Gary Hollister. She then knew XanGo was a good fit for her. Several months later, Grace was downsized from her job. That evening, Bob brought home a floral bouquet and the couple celebrated their decision to start their XanGo business.

Grace was further impressed with the company’s venture into skin care with its Glimpse™ product line. “I have had a problem with hyper-pigmentation and sun damage on my face and neck for years. I have tried many different products, but nothing would really address this,” she says. Grace was ready to try laser treatment when she received the Glimpse samples. After using the products for two weeks, she noticed signiﬁcant improvements to her skin. Because of these incredible products, dedicated corporate leadership, and their hardworking team, 20 months into their XanGo business, Bob was able to retire his construction company.

Dramatic Results Both Bob and Grace say they considered themselves to be pretty healthy people and didn’t expect to see many benefits from drinking XanGo Juice. Instead, both saw dramatic results.

Around the Globe Working and playing together is what this couple enjoys most. With a team of 30,000 distributors around the globe, Bob and Grace often combine business and pleasure through travel.

Grace and Bob play with their granddaughters; Sloan, 1, and newborn twins Madison and Gianna.

“We’ve probably traveled more in the last ﬁve years than we had in the 15 to 20 years before that,” Grace says. They’ve been to Hawaii eight times, taken several trips in Europe and visited the Cayman Islands, Singapore and Thailand. In addition, they’ve been able to enhance a family tradition of visiting Palm Springs, Calif., for spring break. “We used to take the kids to California for a week every year,” Grace says. “Our dream has always been to take all the kids and grandkids there, and now we can do that, and we stay for a month.” Thirty years ago, Grace remembers Bob telling her that they would one day be doing network marketing full time, living and working on their own terms. Now that they’re living that dream, Bob says he still makes sure that he takes the time to stop and reﬂect on the lifestyle they’ve created. “I like to sit back now and then and just say ‘Wow!’ ” he says. “We don’t take this for granted. It’s really a dream come true.” SfH

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Photography by Chris Barr

Leaders & Achievers

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Carolyn Johnson 200K Premier Select Arizona

Key to Success Acting like a business owner is a very important part of the equation.

She’s Finding Peace by Wendy Rudman

Thirty years ago, Carolyn Johnson’s cousin tried to pique her interest in a network marketing opportunity, but the time wasn’t right. Carolyn was busy scaling the corporate ladder—working 60 to 70 hours a week—and she was determined to keep climbing. Three decades later, when her cousin found a new opportunity called XanGo and again approached Carolyn, this time she was ready. She’d already traded in the corporate world to become a small-business owner, but it still wasn’t everything she dreamed. Now a successful distributor with XanGo, Carolyn earns much more than she did as a top executive in the corporate world. And that new paycheck comes with a lifestyle and freedom most people would envy. “It’s great to make a lot of money, but if you don’t have any time to enjoy it or your time, it’s very restrictive,” says Carolyn, who is a 200K Premier Select with XanGo. “This puts a whole other level of peace in your heart.” Days Are Never the Same Carolyn schedules her work around her life, not the other way around. She’s built such a successful XanGo business that she can afford a full-time assistant, who helps her keep up with phone calls, e-mail and trip planning. During some weeks, Carolyn works ﬁve to 10 hours; other weeks she might work 40. But she never has to put in the kind of hours she did in the corporate world. “It’s not this constant 40, 50 or 60 hours a week that I put in for many years,” she says. “I can’t even imagine going back to work in an office where someone’s telling me I have to be in at 8 o’clock and I can’t leave until 5.”

Carolyn Johnson’s workday often includes ice cream with her grandkids.

Work still keeps her very busy. It is just different from the days when “busy” meant spending long days in an ofﬁce cubicle, far from home. She can work anywhere in the world as long as she has her laptop and a cell phone. The pressure is less intense. The success is more phenomenal. Carolyn’s grown son and daughter, who each have a XanGo business, live close by, which means this grandma has plenty of time with her grandchildren. And their respective XanGo businesses allow them to stay at home full time with their children. “A day in my ofﬁce can be grandchildren in my living room playing a game or I can be on the computer or phone,” she says. “The days are never exactly the same. That’s the beauty of running a business out of your home.” Serving Others But her gratification comes from more than a healthy bank account and a family-

centered lifestyle. Carolyn has a deep appreciation for the company’s founders, who have created a work environment ﬁlled with mutual respect. The company is dedicated to health and fitness, a dedication that is reflected in all of their products. “It’s exciting to me that not only are we helping people change their lives financially, but, many times, we see people’s health changing as well,” she says. Carolyn also enjoys the opportunity XanGo gives her to help others. It’s a serviceoriented business, where serving others and teaching others is part of the reward. That’s very different from the corporate world, where she spent so many years. There, the emphasis was on managing people, not helping them. “When we realize it’s about helping others achieve what they want in life, then it no longer is about what we want,” she says. “The more we serve others, the more we receive.” SfH

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WorldPower XanGo’s internation international growth is in its expanding success infancy, but its ex attributed to these global is largely attribu builders. business build XanGo’s rapid growth g is not bound by the fruited amber waves of grain. There are success plains and ambe around the globe in places like stories being told t Taiwan, Japan and plenty of other Australia, Ta countries. After Af all, health and ﬁnancial well-being are universal universa aspirations. Some of XanGo’s top international distributhe XanGo opportunity and tors are bringing b products tto previously untapped markets. A few their thoughts on why XanGo of them shared s thrives as an international business and tell how businesses are growing. SfH their busine Lui Li Jen 100K Taiwan Taiwan is becoming a society where health and wellness products are the next trend. XanGo is an innovative business in the wellness industry. You can drink the XanGo® Juice and feel good. XanGo is suitable for everyone, no matter how old or how young. XanGo’s culture is full of energy, hope and passion!

Yuji Sato 100K Japan Xango thrives as an international business because of something I call the “XanGo mind.” The XanGo mind represents goodness and happiness that is universal. With XanGo, I’m achieving my dreams and goals.

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Liu Hsiea Lin and Lin Ting Chun 200K Taiwan XanGo is a great company with popular products and a fine system. Furthermore, XanGo is a young company—just beginning in Taiwan and the rest of Asia. Sometimes you can find a company with just a good product or just a good business opportunity system. But it is very unusual to have both, and that’s what XanGo offers.

Rui Ludovino Premier Portugal My dream was travel the world. So the opening of new markets for me is the perfect combination: travel, do more business, and have fun! In a new market we can do it better and start all over again. We can travel more, see new places and have more friends.

Annie Jesaulenko 200K Australia XanGo has an incredible management team with global vision, and its six founders have unbelievable experience in the industry. With unique, highly consumable first-to-market products, XanGo has exceptional branding,

innovation and market leadership. After 7 years, I am honored to be part of this great company as I build my business from Australia.

Luc and Kathy Meiresonne 100K Belgium Simplicity, good rewards, a product that is in demand and the assurance that this business is here to stay—this is exactly what XanGo stands for. XanGo’s product line is very well situated in the market and there is a lot of demand for such a product. In my 30 years of experience in the network marketing business, I have never encountered a company with such a simple and honest rewards system. The team of six co-founders helps make this company grow worldwide and make sure it is here to stay!

Cliff Pamment 100K Australia My background is farming in Australia, where you’ll only get 8 or 9 inches of rain each year to grow a wheat crop. The way I see it, there are five things a farmer needs to grow a crop:

XExceptional seed YGood soil ZThe right fertilizer [Water at the right time \Be a good farmer who understands all of the above, and who is prepared to put in a lot of work and money before he sees any results.

When you look at a company like XanGo, you can see why they are thriving:

X Exceptional leadership Y Exceptional products Z Real science behind the products [ A committed customer service team \ The best distributors that understand all of the above

Erlend Vatne 100K Norway The XanGo business model is a proven concept that simply works! It does not matter which country XanGo enters. The products and the compensation plan are effective in all markets around the world. The XanGo brand is fun and exciting, the products are exceptional and unique and the leadership is outstanding. This all makes the XanGo story incredibly powerful. XanGo is built to last and built to thrive!

Katherine Shen 200K Taiwan For more than half a year I have been helping those in my downline to develop their international XanGo businesses. I plan to have at least two to three personally sponsored leaders in every country. I hope that, down the road, my efforts will help make my co-workers’ lives colorful and valuable. I will also try my best to reach 500K by the time I go back to Convention this year. I love to share my tears and happiness with all my XanGo friends all over the world!

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Queen of Fruits, The King of Opportunity

by K. Shelby Skrhak and Nicole Bywater Joe Morton remembers the ﬁrst time he tasted mangosteen, the exotic fruit that would lead to the launch of XanGo, a $1.5 billion brand. While working in Southeast Asia in 1997, Morton was offered a local delicacy, the mangosteen. He was told this “queen of fruits,” as it is known by locals, ripens twice a year and has long been revered for its taste and healing properties. “It was the most beautiful and unique fruit imaginable,” Joe recalls with vivid certainty. “The taste was remarkable, with a crisp, cool sensation that was both sweet and slightly tart.”

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With that taste, Joe recognized the unique vvalue of this fruit; he knew this exotic crop varieties of botanicals because of his was different. He was knowledgeable about many m unique childhood: His mother ran a health food fo store, and his father managed Canadian operations for a pioneering natural health ccompany. But this botanical was new to him, so Joe began asking about the mangosteen, and soon learned its storied role in traditional folklore. He found out that civilizations of o years past had ingested the mangosteen to combat the effects of dysentery and diarrhea diarrhe and applied it topically to treat a wide variety of skin disorders. Natives achieved this by either grinding the outer rind—or “pericarp,” as it’s t’s called—and either applying it directly to the skin or steeping it in water overnight and then drinking the resulting mangosteen tea. “Natives discovered that mangosteen was something Mother Nature offered to help overcome common ailments in those countries, such as dysentery and diarrhea,” Joe says. Enlisting his brother Gordon, along with colleague Aaron Garrity, the group set out to learn more about the collected research of the mangosteen. Combing through volumes and volumes of credible scientific research on the fruit that had been conducted in Asia, the team was soon overwhelmed with the stacks of academic documents and scientific studies published in North America about this fruit they’d never heard of. They learned that the mangosteen was a rich source of incredibly powerful antioxidants that had been scrutinized by research teams for potential health benefits. The years of research spoke volumes for the mangosteen. And, yet, the group that would eventually become XanGo co-founders discovered that there were no known marketed mangosteen products in the United States.

First to Market The team knew they’d uncovered an incredible botanical and business opportunity. “I remember, there was a moment when we all looked at each other and thought, ‘This is it,’ ” Joe says. “Just as aloe vera’s therapeutic properties were first marketed by a network marketing company, we had found something just as remarkable. I even turned to my brother Gordon and told him, ‘We’ve got the next aloe vera.’ ” “There’s only one chance to be first to market. It’s a unique position that you can’t take lightly,” Joe adds. “When you’re fi rst to market, everyone compares themselves to you, the original.” Aaron Garrity likens that position of being first to market with a mangosteen product to one of the largest, most iconic brands in the world. “When you look at a company like CocaCola, I can get off a plane anywhere in the world, from Hong Kong to Moscow to the smallest little town in South America, and within five minutes, I can find a Coca-Cola,” Aaron says. “No matter the language barriers between us, when I ask for a Coca-Cola, people know what

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“It was the most beautiful and unique fruit imaginable,” Joe Morton recalls with vivid certainty. “The taste was remarkable with a crisp, cool sensation that was both sweet and slightly tart.”

I’m talking about. That reflects the breadth of their marketplace and something we at XanGo look to on our horizon.” Of course, Coca-Cola’s been in business for 120 years, he reminds us. “So they’ve had a tremendous head start on rolling their product out!” Aaron says, laughing. “But what Coca-Cola has done right—in addition to having some of the most successful branding campaigns ever launched—is be the first to market everywhere.” XanGo’s founders had the foresight to see the rare opportunity they had to be the first U.S. company to bring a mangosteen product to a Western market. XanGo and its premium, functional mangosteen products, such as XanGo Juice®, are the results of the team’s exploration and business vision to expand the value of the mangosteen fruit from Asia to the rest of the world. “We knew we had something special here. Mangosteen tastes phenomenal; that’s intriguing in itself,” Joe says. “But this greattasting fruit also has ancient therapeutic properties that have been used in Eastern culture for thousands of years. From Malaysia to India, China and beyond, all these different countries and cultures are drawn to this one fruit.” Joe and his team formed an independent research team to study the fruit’s potential range of health benefits. This research would later guide the team’s development of the proprietary formula for the dietary supplement that came to be known as XanGo Juice. He also invited brother Gordon to be a part of the start of this company. Together, Joe and Gordon Morton coined the company name by combining the words xanthones (vigorous phytonutrients that contain antioxidant properties) and mangosteen (the fruit containing xanthones and fl avonoids). And thus, XanGo was born.

Sept. 11, 2002 On Sept. 11, 2002, XanGo was founded with just 14 employees. The Salt Lake City company could have incorporated on any day, but they purposely chose a day that may have been cloaked in a forever negative connotation—Sept. 11, 2002, the one-year anniversary of the World Trade Center bombings in New York City. “It was one year after 9/11, and, at the time, we were experiencing

a tough economy,” Joe says. “It was difficult to raise capital at that time because no one wanted to fund a startup, let alone a startup company for a fruit they’d never heard of. The economy and our nation were in a very cautious place.” Gordon Morton continues, “The business climate in which XanGo was founded was a difficult one. There was a lack of trust in the business world, and consumers felt let down following several high-profile corporate meltdowns. Also, the world’s economy took a major hit and people needed a reason to be optimistic again.” “ We, as founders, took a big risk, but it was a calculated risk, and one that we knew would work,” Joe says. “With the founding of XanGo seven years ago, we began giving people an opportunity to build a business and give back to society. And that continues today.” For the XanGo founders, they’d stumbled across the right product at the right time—t wo key components for a great business opportunity. People are often looking for this perfect combination of the right product at the right time, but stepping out of their comfort zone can be a scary proposition. “I tell people even today that with our business, ‘It’s safe to dream again,’ ” Joe says. “We dreamed and found success. So, too, can our business partners, the distributors.”

Gaining Momentum As a traditional startup, the company experienced its share of early challenges. In its first days of international shipping, XanGo ran into a roadblock when its brand-new, ready-to-ship XanGo Juice was detained at a foreign port and ultimately destroyed. “But those things happen and you roll with the punches,” Aaron says. Joe recalls the day when faxes started rolling in, overwhelming the young company with interest. “ You know that old UPS commercial that shows a couple guys in an ofﬁce, hovering over a computer that’s tracking new orders as they come in. First, there’s one, then there’s 10, then there’s too many for them to keep up

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Meet the Founders… Joe Morton Before founding XanGo, Joe Morton worked for various multinational direct sales companies with annual sales averaging hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue, where he was responsible for helping build the international footprint for these companies. A ﬁve-time Ironman competitor, Joe has long held a passion for health and wellness, and in 2008, Utah Business magazine named him the state’s “Fittest Executive.” He has participated in several charitable missions at home and abroad through the company’s XanGo Goodness Foundation. Gordon Morton An experienced direct sales distributor, Gordon Morton created XanGo’s compensation plans, as well as the XanGo Goodness Foundation philanthropic program, and oversaw the development of XanGo.TV, the distributor video-sharing Web site. A graduate of Brigham Young University–Hawaii, Morton began his career with Enhanced Living International, where he led marketing efforts for three additional organizations before entering direct sales and ranking as the No. 1 distributor for several years.

Aaron Garrity Prior to founding XanGo, Aaron Garrity simultaneously earned an MBA and a juris doctorate, all while managing global marketing and product launches with millions of dollars in sales for another multinational health and nutrition company. Garrity previously served as president and CEO of XanGo, leading the company to more than $300 million in sales in its ﬁrst three years. Ernst & Young honored Garrity with its prestigious 2006 Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and in 2008, and he was named CEO of the Year by Utah Business magazine. Gary Hollister Chairman emeritus Gary Hollister served as XanGo’s CEO from its launch in 2002 to 2006. After graduating from Drake University, Hollister worked at Merle Norman Cosmetics in California, eventually becoming president and COO. Before starting the Hollister Group, a marketing organization to serve the beauty and fashion industry. Hollister was then asked to lead a turnaround strategy for the multilevel marketing company Enrich International, where he introduced the company and its products to the Japanese markets, which became the company’s fastest-growing market.

Kent Wood A licensed CPA, Wood joined XanGo as one of its founders and its ﬁrst CFO, and he was responsible for raising the startup capital for the company. His leadership was instrumental in paying back—more than two and half years ahead of schedule—the initial investment by company investors. Wood has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in accounting from Brigham Young University, and, while attending college, he worked full time for a network marketing company. Bryan Davis A lawyer by education and trade, Davis has held a crucial role in XanGo’s international growth. Constantly traveling, Davis pushes forward an aggressive agenda to facilitate XanGo’s rapid expansion. Before founding XanGo, Davis worked in private practice as a civil attorney, and then became the director of legal services for a large international ﬁrm, negotiating billiondollar transactions. He attended Brigham Young University and graduated with a juris doctorate from the University of Puget Sound School of Law.

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Studies Show… Early scientific studies conducted in Asia show the mangosteen fruit is a rich source of incredibly powerful phytonutrients called xanthones. Phytonutrients are natural, bioactive compounds found in plant foods. Among the phytonutrients found in the rind of the mangosteen, xanthones stand alone in their impressive benefits. Scientific studies suggest xanthones may promote healthy bodily function, and may help:** ➣ maintain intestinal health ➣ support the immune system ➣ neutralize free radicals ➣ support cartilage and joint function ➣ promote a healthy seasonal respiratory system **These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.

with,” he says. “The day our orders started rolling in felt somewhat like that.... And to see it actually happen, one by one, well, it was a very surreal experience.” T h e fo u n d e r s w e r e e x c it e d t o s e e the business begin to take off, gaining the momentum they knew their opportunity deserved. “Right from the beginning, we had a feeling,” Joe says. “People would show up on our doorstep wanting to know more

about the product.” He remembers visiting the manufacturing facility for the first run of the product and begging for more samples just to keep up with the demand. Then, as he began to hear personal stories from those who were seeing great beneﬁts from the product, Joe started to realize the profound effect XanGo would have on the lives of others. “It just represented direct sales so well because it’s not just about selling a product or an opportunity or a management team or a downline,” he says. “We become emotionally attached. The ﬁrst call I got was a really special moment that obviously made a difference—blessing people’s lives.”

No Smoke and Mirrors Because of its measured international success, XanGo has expanded offices all over the world, operating in 33 countries. Its headquarters outside Salt Lake City serve as home base for approximately 500 XanGo employees. The 30-acre corporate campus consists of three expansive buildings totaling 280,000 square feet and houses an on-site soccer practice field for the Major League Soccer team Real Salt Lake, for whom XanGo is a prominent sponsor. “ We’re a compa ny t hat ’s ex t remely engaged,” A aron says. “ We’ve invested millions and millions of dollars in our building and infrastructure because that’s an important element of our company. We’re not renting our ofﬁce; we’re here to stay. There’s no smoke and mirrors. This is a brand that’s invested in the long haul.” To be properly introduced to XanGo is to learn of the six men who had the unique vision to start it rolling in the ﬁ rst place. Together, their industry experience, business insight and relentless drive combine

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When you’re ﬁrst to market, everyone compares themselves to you, the original.

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XanGo now has enrolled more than distributors around the globe.

1 million

for the one-of-a-kind dynamic necessary to create one of the fastestgrowing global brands in the marketplace. With their different backgrounds and areas of expertise, each of the six founders adds to the good balance of different perspectives. Plus, it helps that they’re all friends. “The key is being smart enough to know what you do best,” Joe says. “When it comes to the overall big picture, there’s not an area of the company that I haven’t at least dabbled in. But there’s a respect and an appreciation for others on the team who may be able to do something the best.” Active in and widely recognized by the local business scene, Joe, Aaron and Kent Wood have all been named to Utah Business magazine’s reputable “Forty Under 40” business leaders list. Gary Hollister, along with Aaron, was named a national ﬁnalist in the 2006 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards. Bryan Davis sits at the helm of charity-driven boards, as well as serving on the board of directors for the World Trade Center of Utah.

Distributors First XanGo has now enrolled more than 1 million distributors around the globe—people it considers true partners in every aspect of the business. From its payout structure to its branding efforts and sponsorship of a Major League Soccer club, to the company’s extensive charity work, any decision in XanGo comes back to one question: What does this mean to the distributor? “Ultimately, what it comes down to is facilitating the distributor process,” Aaron says. “As a distributor in XanGo, you can come in and do less work than has traditionally been required in network marketing to make more money in less time. That is why XanGo has been able to break so many records in this industry. We’ve enhanced the value of what it means to be a distributor in direct sales.” Strong leadership, a research-backed product, innovative marketing— any one of those things would make for a successful business. But, with XanGo, the magic lies in having all that, along with a compensation plan that distributors love. “Our compensation plan is built to pay out a true 50 percent on every product we sell,” Joe says. “The distributors have access to every employee in the company and, at all levels, are able to provide input. And

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we listen to our distributors and build the company so that they can have maximum success.” Being a XanGo distributor is an experience—and it’s one people can feel good about. “Taking care of our distributors is part of our brand identity,” Joe says. “Our distributors are having fun, improving themselves and their lifestyles, enjoying better health, and making a difference locally and abroad. This happens through our premium line of healthy products, a dynamic business plan, and a global philanthropic program that beneﬁts children and families in need around the world.”

International Expansion XanGo’s international presence was a focus of the founders from the very beginning. The company launched the entire United States the ﬁrst day it opened, with all of Canada opening a few weeks later. Today, they’re successfully doing business in 33 countries. “Our international growth has been cautious, but rapid, which is very exciting,” Joe says. Of course, rapid international expansion has its challenges. Language and cultural barriers, widely varied regulations from market to market, and methods of banking and payment make international expansion a necessary challenge. In just its first seven years alone, XanGo has crafted a foundation that’s created many millionaires and generated more than $1.5 billion in cumulative revenue. And most of that was done as a one-product company. Now, having launched into brand-new categories of health and wellness and making their opportunity available to people around the world, just imagine the heights to which XanGo can soar. “Through it all, we’ve learned lessons and become really good at launching markets,” Joe says, citing Portugal’s nearly 500 percent growth since its dynamic June 2009 launch. “Portugal, as well as Mexico and Taiwan, are very explosive markets that are making an immense impact upon our worldwide business. But, as we continue to expand, our distributors can know that we have the critical infrastructure in place to make these exciting new markets lucrative.” Joe continues, “With a great compensation plan, great products, strong branding and, most important, incredible distributor leaders who are visionary and united, XanGo has an enormously bright scope for the future.” SfH VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH

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XanGo Hall of Fame The top distributors in the XanGo family are known as 500K Premiers. The rewards at this elite level are great, and so is the work to get there. A lot of XanGoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s incredible success in its short history can be attributed to these leading business builders. The group was recently treated to an all-expenses-paid trip to Paris. There are plenty of other distributors working to hit the 500K level. While the group will grow in the future, itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a lofty goal for all XanGo distributors.

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500K PREMIERS

Susie and David Butler

Sherman Unkefer

Armando V. De Guzman, M.D.

Anton and Dustin Garrity

Florida

Arizona

Utah

Sandi and Ed Cohen

Art and Terry Manville

Carole Escolano

Mike and Linda McCarthy

Nevada

Washington

California

Colorado

Steven and Sharron Sharif

Tim and Kristen Sharif

Estela Salinas

Richard and Karol Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Brien

California

Nevada

Mexico

Wisconsin

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Brand Power XanGo understands tthe he best marketing comes from the things thin unsaid. Sleek, well-designed ed pproducts and company materials teririals speak volumes for XanGoâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s cachet and credibility.

by K. Shelby Skrhak and Nicole Bywater

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Brand Power

IN today’s

marketing world, companies com om ompanies are often oftten described one of two wo ways: Mac or or PC. And who created d tthat term? Ap Apple, pple, the very company y that th t created su such uch a category for this comparison. comp mparison. In this mp thiis case, it’s the personification n of an inanima inanimate ate object to describe someone’s particular someo particulaar bent of creativity. reativity. You’re either eit zeros andd ones, the mathematic binary code that ma makes akes computers paraphernalia so vvery uters and its paraph ery “PC,” orr you’re clean, open and out-o out-ofofthe-box with your th white space that lets you ur words “breathe.” That’ss a Mac. words and images “b th ” T Andd in Lake in a lot of ways, that’s Salt L ake Citybased XanGo. XanGo.

In creating XanGo, the company founders aspired to add some magic to network marketing with company and product branding—something they noticed was decidedly missing in the industry. Not content to t hrow a hastily designed label onto its product bottle or to scribble some marketing language into a company brochure, XanGo’s six founders recognized the weight that sleek, unified and sophisticated product bottles, marketing materials and distributor kits carry with consumers. “That was part of our lead into the marketplace,” says XanGo co-founder Aaron Garrity. “We wanted our company to have a little sex appeal. From the presentation of the business opportunity to the way we do our meetings, meetin that’s all innovative marketing ago, when we were founded. that wasn’t happening seven years ye It’s one of the reasons we started this company. We knew that the networkk marketing industry needed k d d a facelift. It seemingly had no magic. We wanted to bring that magic and just change a whole lot of things up.” When it comes to branding in the traditional business world, it seems some companies just “get it.” A “brand wall” in Garrity’s office serves as a constant reminder of other companies that “get it.” On the wall are companies like HarleyDavidson, Google, Tiffany & Co., Coca-Cola, MTV, the Beatles, Aston Martin and Apple. They’re category creators—companies that introduce the category, and therefore serve as the definition for that category in their industry. “Everyone knows that being the creator of the category and the first to market is the most dominant position that you can hold in business,” Garrity explains.

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Building a Brand

addition to holding such dominant positions in their industries, the companies on Garrity’s wall are renowned for their branding, a strategy used often in traditional business, but one that’s largely been ignored in the network marketing industry. Until XanGo, that is. In the company’s typical pioneer style, the founders knew that, although their initial success was based on the mangosteen, they didn’t want to just bring an ingredient to market, as many others in the industry had done before. Instead, they wanted to create a lifestyle, a look and a culture all their own, Garrity says. To do that, they knew XanGo had to build a brand. “A brand is not just your product s, your logo or your t agline,” says co-founder Gordon Morton. “It is the emotional connection that the customer has wit h t he compa ny. It represent s t he collection of their hopes, dreams and values found within what the company represents.”

XanGo wasn’t content to throw a hastily designed label onto its product bottle or scribble some marketing language into a company brochure.

When they started XanGo, Morton says, “We knew we had a great product and brand, but that the company needed to stand for much more than a bottle of juice. It needed to represent our ideals of making a difference, of creating a true partnership with distributors, and of being different and better than the rest—we needed to be exceptional and stand out.” That method for standing out is known as branding. “The brand is the company, the product,” Garrity says. “Never before in the history of network marketing had

t h at ex isted . You had companies out there that had wellbranded companies but unless you were i m m er s e d i n t h e compa nie s t hemselve s, you never k n e w wh a t t h e i r lead product was.” XanGo wanted to change that history. They wanted to deﬁ ne the category of mangosteen. And thanks to their innovative marketing, they’ve been able to achieve that goal in a remarkably short amount of time. “ W hen people refer to mangosteen, t he y act u a lly s ay X a n G o ,” G a r r i t y says. W hen the company was only 5 years old, an independent survey found that 4.25 percent of Americans had heard of XanGo. That may not sound like much, but it’s actually two-times better than what high-definition TV had its first eight years of business, he explains. The company is well on its way to accomplishing their objective of getting that number up to 10 percent. However, as the company grows, there becomes a new challenge of maintaining the basic values of the company and keeping the brand from becoming diluted. XanGo strategically avoided that by staying a one-name, one-product company for ﬁ ve years before launching its second product in the United States and Canada in 2007, the XanGo 3SIXTY5™ multivitamin. “A huge part of our success has been our focus on and our dedication to really building that brand,” Garrity says. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 71

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Brand Power Real Salt Lake

ecoming a house household se sehold name is so crucial to XanGo that the founders tookk a huge step in 2006 by becoming the first company in America Am m merica to place their name on the front of a professional sports spo orts or team jersey. “The jersey-front sponsorship sponsor or orship has always been referred to as the ‘Holy Grail,’ ” Garrit Garrity rit rity says. “When the owner of the Real Salt Lake soccer team us as a possible m approached a sponsor, road because a professional nsor, it was a real fork in the ro roa sponsorship onsorship on a jersey, while very ccommon in other parts of the world, had never been done in America.” A Despite the he risks that come with being bein the first one out, XanGo decided ed to jump in with both feet,, becoming b forever known ass the t first company to do this his is type of spon sorship. Si Sinc e Since then, several other Major Maj ajor ajo L e a g u e S o c c e r c lu b s have followed XanGo’s lead, announcing similar partnerships with major globa l bra nd s. A nd in July, XanGo announced a t hree-year renewal of t heir jersey-front sponsorship. Common Com mon in soccercrazed continents such as

South America and Europe Europe, these jersey-front sponsorships offer a great opportunity for brand visibility all over the world, thanks to televised games and fans who wear their jerseys time and time ag again in support of their teams. Garrity recalls a trip to Norway recently in which he was N wearing a XanGo shirt and had someone tell him that they had seen the XanGo name during a soccer match on TV. “This sponsorship is front and center, wherever the f team plays, and provides oopportunities for our distributors to engage in conversation conversations about what the name on the jersey means,” Morton say says. XanGo’s sponsored team, Real Salt Lake, is a Major tea L e a gue So c c er sister team to Real Madrid—a Spanish team that’s one of the most recognized all over the world. One reason for Real Madrid’s popularity lies, in part, b e c a u s e t h e s p o r t ’s British superstar, David B e ck h a m , pl aye d for the team before joining the Los Angeles-based Galaxy team. But even before David Beckham wore his L . A . Ga la x y jersey, he and his Real M ad r id m at e s pl aye d against Real Salt Lake in a match known as the “XanGo Cup.” “Xa XanGo’s support of Real Rea Salt Lake extends beyond the team’s jersey, as the team has practice grounds at the corporate campus. The partnership is a win-win, Garrity pa says, because the soccer team gets to align itself with a company known for heal health and wellness, while XanGo enjoys the name recognition and being a part of a good, healthy profession.

Color of Healing

nother company on Garrity’s “brand wall,” Tiffany & Co., is known for their signature blue boxes. “When it comes to the look, feel and quality, there’s nothing quite like Tiffany & Co.,” he says. “When you see that blue box, as opposed to any other box you may get at Christmas, that blue box is extra-special.” For XanGo, the signature color is a vibrant orange, representing the color worn by monks in Southeast Asia.

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“When someone gets sick in those countries, they don’t go to hospitals because most people don’t live in large cities,” Garrity explains. “Where they’ll go is to their local temple. They’ll speak to a monk who has a book of remedies that’s been handed down for generations. And, depending on their need, the monks can put together a concoction of fruits and vegetables.” For centuries, these concoctions have included mangosteen. So for the native people of Southeast Asia, orange represents healing. Undeniably, the color orange helps XanGo stand out. Morton recalls a convention in which they handed out orange, XanGo-branded umbrellas to distributors. “It rained, and when it did, more than 8,000 people were walking the streets of downtown Salt Lake City, painting the city orange,” he says with a smile. Another design used throughout the company is a wheel surrounding a star. The symbol represents the star found on the bottom of the mangosteen, which shows you how many segments (similar to orange segments) of the fruit there are. That star is used ever y where— a branding signature on Web sites, clothing and packaging. This signature color and symbol can be found throughout XanGo’s ofﬁces, its product packaging and signage, and just about anything else the founders get their hands on—including custom guitars that Garrity had made for each of the founders one year. “We do it everywhere,” he says of XanGo’s ‘look.’ “There are not enough places or enough ways that we can be creative, in my opinion!” Taking a page out of Coca-Cola’s book, Garrity says, “You go into that tiny little town in South America, and there’s a little shack of a store with a banner of triangular Coca-Cola flags. They’ll brand that, and they’ll brand right in the middle of a giant city like Tokyo. It doesn’t matter. And that’s our philosophy, too. We’re going to be everywhere.”

XanGo has established a tradition of firsts. From being the first to market with mangosteen, to the first American company with a jersey-front sponsorship, to being the first with XanGo.TV, the industry’s first branded YouTube-style video sharing site, this is a company not afraid of taking risks. “We’re definitely revolutionaries,” Garrity says. “We embrace being different. The rest will follow—that’s our commitment to the industry. Our commitment is to be the ones paving the way.”

“When people refer to mangosteen, they actually say ‘XanGo’.” —Aaron Garrity, XanGo Co-Founder So have we seen all that XanGo has to offer? Not by a long shot, Garrity says. “You haven’t seen anything yet. We’ve got some pretty great ideas that have been brewing for a long time. It’s hard not to just do them all, but, at the same time, we can’t sunburn the market.” Piece by piece, he says, they plan to continue rolling out new ideas to enhance the brand—a bonus for XanGo’s distributors. Having the cachet and backing of a well-branded company makes it even easier to be successful. “At the end of the day, what we do facilitates the distributors’ work,” Garrity says. “There’s a young, fresh and aggressive approach that carries over into everything we do. There’s not another company out there like us. We’re determined to carve out the path in this new generation of network marketing.” SfH VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 73

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ADVISOR

DARA TORRES Dara Torres has set three world records and has brought home twelve Olympic medals, including four golds. She is the fi rst American swimmer to have competed in five Olympics. She lives in Florida.

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The Water Doesn’t Know How Old You Are Five-Time Olympian Dara Torres says age is only a state of mind. by Dara Torres

I want to be really honest with you. I was not brave enough to dream this dream all at once. I didn’t just wake up one day—pregnant, 38, out of the water seven years—and think, Oh, I have a great idea! I think I’ll go to Beijing and win a few more Olympic medals! I’m gutsy, but I’m not that gutsy. Only in the first of my three comebacks did the dream to go for a medal again appear fully formed, like a light bulb going off in my head. At the time, in 1991, I was 24 (which probably had something to do with my bravery) and working as a production assistant at NBC Sports in New York City. I’d retired from swimming a couple of years prior, but still held the American record in the 50-meter freestyle. I’d thought I’d already had a full career. I’d broken my first world record in 1982 at age 15. I’d swum and won gold medals in relays in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics. I’d also earned 28 NCAA swimming awards, the most possible, while in college at the University of Florida. So I was done. I’d retired. Each year was thought to be a huge chunk of a swimmer’s competitive life span. Unless the next Olympics was very soon after your graduation, you were finished. When, I decided to train for the Olympics again in 1991, I didn’t consciously think that I had unfinished business in the pool. I just knew I wanted to swim again. I missed the competition. I missed the speed. I missed the focus. I missed funneling thousands of

miles of training into one or two lengths of the pool. It’s not that I didn’t care about my life in New York or my television job. I did. I loved them both, and I was very grateful for them. But the dream of earning another Olympic medal was just so overwhelming. I knew I could swim faster than I had in the 1988 Olympic Games. Besides, once a big idea like that takes hold of me, I tend to act on it quickly and not look back. I don’t think about the negatives, or entertain doubts. I just move forward. I focus single-mindedly on my success. I suppose it’s blindly optimistic, but it’s also effective. I believe in hard work, and my ability to do it. Now, comebacks are complicated. You may have decided it’s time to reassert yourself back into your sport, but everyone else might not be ready for you. There are two types of expectations: those that you set for yourself and those that other people set for you. I never expected to compete in five Olympic Games spanning three decades. I never expected to retire from swimming three times, and then return three times.

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ADVISOR

DARA TORRES

The real reason most of us fear middle age is that middle age is when we give up on ourselves. Dara Torres

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What It Takes to Make a Comeback People ask me all the time what it takes to wage a successful comeback. And I have a simple answer: You have to want to keep winning, and want it badly. You have to be determined to move closer to reaching your full potential, instead of letting yourself slip farther away. I didn’t consult any scientists to see if my comeback plans were crazy. I suppose I didn’t want to hear if they were. But, later, I learned that lifestyle, not genetics, is the primary reason older athletes tend to slow down, and that made a lot of sense to me. Most people, as they reach their 30s, place more priority on their jobs and families, as well they should. But, as a result, they downgrade their workout goals from achieving personal bests to staying in shape. This might be the right decision for many. This might even be the right decision for you. But if you have athletic ambitions, if you still want to compete and win, there’s no reason you have to give up. Your body can still perform if you put in the eﬀort—if you still do that 10-mile run or that long, hard-quality set. You just need to be smarter about your training and more time-eﬃcient.

I never expected to have a 2-year-old daughter (Tessa) at the age of 41, while also winning three silver Olympic medals. But no one else expected these things of me, either. I guess you could say that I never stop trying to surprise myself. Age has never molded my expectations for myself. I’ve been a competitive swimmer for more than 30 years. Most of the women I competed against in the 2008 Beijing Olympics either weren’t born or were in diapers when I began my swimming career. I easily was twice their age. But I’ve often reminded myself that the water doesn’t know how old you are. It doesn’t care, either.

While the rest of the world might know how old you are, that doesn’t mean that you have to be limited to the world’s expectations for you. I didn’t just want to compete in another Olympics to prove to myself I could do it. I knew I could. I wanted to win, and I wanted everyone else to know that you shouldn’t put an age limit on your dreams. The real reason most of us fear middle age is that middle age is when we give up on ourselves. There were a lot of people behind me when I made this comeback—a lot of people who didn’t want to give up on themselves. I just couldn’t let all those people down. I felt they were depending

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ADVISOR

DARA TORRES

Dara on Motherhood Becoming a mother changes everything, but it’s also deeply grounding. It forces you to weed out distractions from your life. It compels you to define your values, to figure out who you are. Mothering is also an entirely different way to relate to another human being from anything I’d ever experienced.

on me almost in the same way my relay teammates did. We were in this together. I couldn’t entice so many women and men into dreaming a little longer and aiming a little higher and then not win. In the 50-meter freestyle, I missed gold by 0.01 second—the narrowest of margins in my sport. I felt proud for having succeeded in just about every set of terms you can deﬁne: I’d made the Olympic team, I’d made the ﬁnals, I’d broken my own personal record, I’d smashed the American record, and I’d proven that success in athletics at the highest level is possible in middle age. Yet, I’d lost, and I hate losing. 78

I am who I am—a competitor at heart. That hundredth of a second doesn’t gnaw at me a little; it gnaws at me a lot. I’ve heard people say it puts the focus of my comeback in the right place, on blowing open the possibilities as we age. But that’s not how I think. I’ve wanted to win at everything, every day, since I was a kid. And time doesn’t change a person. It just helps you get a handle on who you are. Even at age 41, I still hate losing; I’m just more gracious about it. I’m also aware that setbacks have an upside: They fuel new dreams. I came away from the 2008 Olympic Games with three silver medals, and 12 total medals for my career.

Like the rest of the world, I’d assumed that after the 2008 Olympics I’d be ﬁnished forever with competitive swimming. I was an old hand at retiring from the sport by then. Besides, winning three medals at age 41 had seemed like such an outrageous pushing of age limits, not even I was audacious enough to imagine more. I’ll be 45 years old in the summer of 2012 when the next summer Olympic Games come around. Who knows if I’ll try to make the Olympic team, or if I’ll succeed, but wouldn’t it be sweet if a 6-year-old Tessa came to London and watched her mother win gold? SfH

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Bella gives at the ďŹ rst of every month.

Her gift helped Ken when he needed it most.

Make a ďŹ nancial contribution to the Red Cross and change a life, starting with your own. Call 1-800-RED CROSS or visit redcross.org. H20399

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HEALTH

TALK

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A Whole-Food Kind of Life by Whitney Allen With every new year comes new resolutions—join a gym, toss files, eat healthy. “Eat healthy” is one of the most common, but also one of the hardest. It’s difficult to plan a healthy meal when there’s barely enough time in a day to grab something from a drive-thru. Plus, factor in that often the words found in most health guides are just plain scary, and it’s no wonder we break this resolution just as quickly as we make it. Luckily, it’s easier than ever to begin eating better, one day at a time, by incorporating natural, whole foods into our diets. Unfortunately, the words are still a little intimidating, but once you understand them, they’re actually pretty simple. Let’s take a look. The Natural Way Whole foods are pure, unprocessed beans, seeds, nuts, grains, fruits and vegetables. And unlike what’s available at the drive-thru and in frozen dinners, they don’t contain artificial sweeteners, texture-altering chemicals or unnatural preservatives that can cause long-term health problems. Instead, whole foods support your health and overall well-being. Antioxidants are found in fruits, veget ables a nd tea s. W hile t hey boost your body’s immune system and strengthen your muscles, bones and skin, antioxidants also protect your body from the daily wear and tear put on it by sugary foods, stress, the sun and environmental factors, such as cigarette smoke and pollution. Exposure to these

damaging elements increases the body’s natural production of free radicals, which can create an imbalance, wreaking havoc on your body’s healthy cells. Antioxidants destroy some of these free radicals, allowing the healthy cells to do their jobs. Basically, the more antioxidants you have in your body, the better off you’ll be. Maintaining a diet rich in whole foods is also a great way to get the omega-3s your body needs to stay in shape to meet the demands you place on it daily. They’re essential fatty acids, meaning our bodies aren’t able to produce them, so we get them from foods we eat. Eating dark-green leafy vegetables and soybeans, foods rich in omega-3, helps our body’s growth and development and can lower blood pressure. Phytochemicals are found in fruits and vegetables and are the part that give it its color, but give us a great taste and protection from certain diseases. Fiber is also an important part of a healthy diet that can be met by eating whole foods. Eating fiber on a regular basis has been associated with reducing the risk of certain types of cancer, helping control diabetes, improving cardiovascular health and aiding weight-loss efforts. Make a Change Once found only in specialty health food stores, whole foods have increasingly made their way onto supermarket store shelves. And with their rise in popularity have come a selection of cookbooks written specifically for families with young children and those who don’t want to choose between healthy living and, well, living. So make a change one day, one food, at a time, which could just change the rest of your life. SfH VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 81

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ADVISOR

ERIK WEIHENMAYER Erik Weihenmayer is the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading blind athlete and the only blind person in history to reach the worldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s seven summits. He is author of Touch the Top of the World and the subject of the awardwining documentary Farther Than the Eye Can See. Erik has been featured on the cover of Time and lives with his family in Golden, Colo.

Paul G. Stoltz, Ph.D., is the CEO of PEAK Learning, a global research and consulting fi rm, and the director of the Global Resilience Project. He is also the originator of the globally acclaimed AQ (Adversity Quotient) method and author of the international bestsellers The Adversity Quotient and The Adversity Quotient at Work. He lives in San Louis Obispo, Calif.

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Summon Your Strengths Whatever does not destroy you makes you stronger. by Erik Weihenmayer

A lot of people buy into the idea that the best way to optimize your potential is to assess your natural strengths (they often refer to these strengths as talents or gifts) and then build your pursuits around them. Sure, natural strengths matter, but relying on them solely can be tragically limiting. Beet hoven wrote his best music, including his great Fifth Symphony, while he was deaf. I wonder what he would have ended up doing if a strengths coach had told him to pick a job “more befitting a deaf person.” Van Gogh was told he was an awful painter. What if he had listened to the naysayers, instead of using the criticism to fuel his passion? Would Einstein, labeled “academically ungifted” as a child, have pursued science if his school counselor had persuaded him to stick with manual labor? What if the countless business leaders with dyslexia—Richard Branson of Virgin and John Chambers of Cisco among them—

Strengths mean little unless you can deliver them in the face of real hardship. had accepted the “known limitations” of their diagnoses? And, speaking personally, I wonder just how many blind climbers there would be. Consider all the strengths lying dormant within each of us, waiting to be summoned. Often, the best things in life do not come naturally. Therefore, you should boldly decide what you want to do, why it’s important and whether you have the will to persevere. Next, ﬁgure out what strengths you have or might be able to develop—from

scratch, if necessary—to make it happen. Then you need to try, struggle, fail and fail again until you get the results you’re after. From that experience of learning, smelt the primary elements—skill and will—and your strengths will emerge. Let adversity be the ﬂame in which your strengths are forged. Use Adversity to Hone Your Strengths Focusing exclusively on what you’re good at can actually be a subconscious way of

copping out of the adversity that’s implicit in every effort. Instead, you want to use adversity to help you grow entirely new strengths and sharpen existing ones. Think of the times you faced a tough situation and, unintentionally, emerged with new confidence, a new insight or perhaps a deeper connection with the magnitude of your own resilience. My bet is you wouldn’t trade those moments for anything. Neither would I. Just as you can develop strengths through adversity, you also have to be able to use them best when adversity hurts the most. An impressive list of strengths means little unless you can deliver those strengths in the face of real hardship. Do this, and they are truly yours. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 83

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ADVISOR

ERIK WEIHENMAYER

When Do You Summon Your Strengths? by Paul G. Stoltz Where would you be and where can you go without the ability to summon your strengths? And what role have you let adversity play? How effectively do you boldly decide what you want to do and why you want to do it, and then figure out what skills you have, can adapt or might be able to develop—from scratch if necessary—to make it happen? Do you, like Erik, use adversity to forge new strengths, or do you typically rely on what you naturally have? Equally important, when do you summon your strengths? Which strengths come through when the weather is calm as opposed to when the weather is rough? When do you feel strongest? When the pressure is on, how does your behavior affect the degree to which others trust and respect you? When adversity strikes, what can people count on you to deliver? To get results, you cannot possibly go it alone, so what about your team? Do the team members build and bring forth their strengths through adversity? Do they all bring out their best when it matters most? Or do people slip into a default mode, resorting to protective, safer, smaller, less effective behavior when the pressure is on? What would you and your team like to take on, but haven’t taken on, maybe because you’re not convinced that you possess the strengths it would take to get there? What if you could achieve this? And how effectively do you weave your individual strengths with others to create collective greatness? Summoning your strengths is not, therefore, just about harnessing the strengths you have. It is also about developing new strengths that you can bring forth in times of adversity to accomplish what you set out to do.

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But regardless of how many strengths you can build and use effectively, it’s almost impossible to achieve greatness alone. Linking with the right people can elevate the breadth and scope of your impact. However, the formula for picking your rope team is much more complex than simply inserting people into their proper spots on the basis of their current abilities, like a snap-together puzzle. Round One to Aconcagua Aconc a gu a , t he t a lle st pe a k in t he Western Hemisphere, highlighted all of my weaknesses and few of my strengths. On Mount McKinley, I could hear my climbing partners’ footsteps crunching in the snow and ice in front of me, and we were all roped together, so following was easier. Aconcagua, though, is one of the windiest places on earth and consists mostly of rock and scree—the loose, floating gravel that makes solid footing nearly impossible. In the howling wind and across the rock, the sound of foot steps would be completely lost. The first time my team and I attempted Aconc a gu a , we fa iled to sum mit . We encountered ex tremely cold, bluster y weather, so we stayed put at a lower camp. As a result, when the one clear, windless day fi nally came to the mountain, we weren’t in position at our high camp and couldn’t take advantage of it. The diffi cult terrain had also taken its toll on me. By the 16th day, when we fi nally went for the summit, I was exhausted and moving way too slowly. At 21,000 feet, with fierce winds blasting us back, I couldn’t hear my climbing partner Chris Morris in front of me anymore. I felt disoriented and a little panicky—not just blind, but now deaf. Chris gathered us together to shout that the climb was over. The mountain’s barricade was just too much for our collective abilities. It was such a difficult and miserable trip that most of my friends weren’t interested in trying again. Also, their blind partner’s slowing them down probably didn’t provide much incentive for another attempt.

right, helping me follow through wind and rock. We practiced over and over, knowing it wouldn’t be enough to master these new skills in calm conditions. We had to make them work in the worst weather. Then we regrouped and took on Aconcagua a second time. Right out of base camp, Chris and I lost our only other teammate, who descended because of acute altitude sickness. It was just the two of us, and as Chris so clearly stated, “Now we cannot afford to make any mistakes.”

New Skills for New Challenges B u t I w a s d e t er m i n e d t o u s e t h i s adversity—our failure—to our advantage, although my will alone would not be enough. I needed to evolve new skills for negotiating this hostile terrain. So during the intervening year, I set about developing the skills that I lacked—and that I knew I needed if we were going to succeed on Aconcagua. I practiced on the slopes of Colorado’s “Fourteeners”—14,000-foot peaks—which have rocky terrain similar to Aconcagua. I honed my pole work to balance more effectively in precarious spots. I trained with extra weight in my pack so we could push strongly if we had to. Chris and I developed a new mode of communication with a bear bell, which Chris would jingle to the left and

Extra Training Pays Off On summit day at 21,000 feet, we encountered even worse winds than the year before: 60 miles per hour. We were being blown back and contemplated retreating. But we had trained enough and had become skilled enough to keep pushing on, with an idea that if we could break through the wind, we’d enter a calmer zone around the leeward side of the mountain. All that training with extra weight was paying off. At 21,500 feet, the wind abated but the cold intensiﬁed. When I stumbled onto the rocky summit, the extreme altitude, along with my complete exhaustion, made my connection with the earth feel tenuous, as if I were perceiving reality through a distant pinhole. But we were on top, ﬁnally, after two years of trying. A ye a r e a rlier, in bet ter we at her, I couldn’t make it to the summit. This time, we used the adversity of that failure to grow stronger and more adept. The tougher it got, the better we got. Together, our will and our skill forged new strengths that overwhelmed my weaknesses and got us to a place most people thought we’d never experience. Through adversity, we equipped ourselves for bigger challenges to come. SfH From The Adversity Advantage: Turning Everyday Struggles into Everyday Greatness by Paul G. Stoltz and Erik Weihenmayer. Copyright © 2006 by Paul Stoltz and Erik Weihenmayer. Reprinted by permission o f F i re s i d e , a D i v i s i o n o f S i m o n & Schuster Inc. VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 85

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miles have the power to grant a wish.” “My

I’m rich. In frequent f lier miles. Since I’m too busy to use them, they’ve just been sitting there. But a friend gave me an idea—donate miles to the Make-A-Wish Foundation®. They need over two billion miles a year to help grant wishes to children with life-threatening medical conditions. With my miles, Sara and her family were able to go on a dream vacation to Hawaii. I felt like the fairy godmother, helping make wishes come true.

“I wish to go to Hawaii.” SARA, AGE 9

We all have the power to grant a wish. Start your journey at www.wishla.org or call 1-800-722-9474

SHARE THE POWER OF A WISH®

Come on board and contribute your time, talents and resources to make children’s wishes come true.

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Different Paths to SUCCESS Take a glimpse into the

lifestyles of these

successful

XanGo

leaders, making their

dreams

come true.

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Photography by Chris Barr

Leaders & Achievers

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Tommy & Lindsay Johnson 200K Premier Select

Key to Success Be coachable. Keep it simple.

Arizona

Motivating Factors by K.C. Barlow

Tommy Johnson had his share of doubts when he first heard about XanGo and its business opportunity. Although intrigued by the products, he was unsure if a direct selling opportunity was for him. Within a few months, though, he and his wife, Lindsay, were convinced XanGo was worth all of the effort they were putting into it. “We just put our heads down and went to work,” Tommy says. “We were motivated by the fact that people told us we couldn’t do it.” Lindsay and Tommy, who make their home in Phoenix with their two young children, eventually sat down and asked themselves what they truly wanted out of XanGo. Their answer? Total freedom. “We love this lifestyle and the freedom you can enjoy,” Tommy says. “We like the professional freedom, the ﬁnancial freedom and the geographical freedom.” Before joining XanGo, Lindsay was a stayat-home mom while Tommy was a salesman for a home builder. “Tommy was practically working 24 hours a day,” Lindsay says. “He totally missed out on some special family moments.” XanGo allows the Johnsons to put family ﬁrst and still earn a healthy income. “We never miss a soccer practice, a recital or a voice lesson,” Tommy says. The Road They Travel Through their success in XanGo, the Johnsons have eliminated some of the challenges many young couples face when raising two children. “We never stress about money,” Tommy says, adding that XanGo has motivated them to diversify their entrepreneurial pursuits. “The residual aspect of this business has allowed us to invest in real estate. The personal development we have experienced in this business is priceless.” In the past three years, they have enjoyed traveling across the globe, visiting a variety

Lindsay and Tommy enjoy a round of table tennis with son, Jerry, 8 and daughter, Sierra, 4.

of destinations, including Rome, Venice, Japan, Thailand, Alaska and the Grand Caymans. “We go to Hawaii at least once a year,” Tommy says, adding that, eventually, they would like to take the children. “Our children will get to see the world with us as we develop this business.” ‘A Natural Answer’ Since launching their XanGo business, the Johnsons have come to enjoy and rely on the company they represent. “We use every one of XanGo’s products,” Tommy says. Lindsay especially likes the Glimpse™ skincare line. “It’s the only thing that’s ever knocked out the acne on my forehead, and it’s stayed gone,” she says. “I really like it.” Tommy’s favorite is the new Eleviv™ dietary supplement. “Everyone knows someone who is fatigued,” he says. “And XanGo has a natural answer.” A Team Effort Lindsay and Tommy say much of their success stems from teamwork. They each concentrate on what they’re good at doing.

“I do most of the front-end work; I’m the one in the trenches, if you will,” Tommy says. “Lindsay does a lot of the behind-the-scenes stuff. Lindsay is the greatest wife and greatest supporter on the planet.” Lindsay says. Tommy’s discipline has made the biggest difference. “Tommy is a goal-minded person, although he doesn’t think he is,” Lindsay says. “In 2004, he wrote a list of things he wanted to accomplish and a time frame to do it in. He’s gone far beyond those goals today and hasn’t slowed down for a second.” The Johnsons say their goals change with each new person they bring into XanGo. “Your goal becomes to help that person reach all of their personal goals and dreams,” Lindsay says. “Watching someone you have developed a relationship and friendship with accomplish what they set out to is incredibly rewarding.” She and Tommy are committed to helping as many people as possible experience the freedom they have discovered. “We love this company,” Lindsay says. “I am so proud of everything that Tommy has accomplished, and I can’t wait to see what will change over the next ﬁve years!” SfH

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Photography by Reed Hoffman

Leaders & Achievers

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Andy & Brenda Willoughby 200K Premier Select Missouri

Key to Success Choose a path and then be persistent.

On the Airwaves by Sarah Paulk

Three decades in the radio and broadcasting industry earned Andy and Brenda Willoughby a hefty paycheck. They’d clinched a spot in the top 2 percent of income earners in Christian broadcasting—Andy’s niche market at the time. They enjoyed the perks of a healthy income, but lamented their lack of family time. “Andy’s days began very early with a morning radio show, and then he’d work eight to 10-plus hours a day managing the radio shows that followed,” Brenda says. “He worked very long hours, often traveling to other cities’ stations that he oversaw as well.”

In under five years with XanGo, I was making over five times the money I did in broadcasting. Seeking an alternative to his hectic schedule, Andy began dabbling in network marketing part time. By networking with friends and business colleagues, Andy discovered XanGo. “I saw humility in the XanGo leaders,” Brenda says. “They were there to serve instead of be served. Their attitude was not, ‘Serve me so I can make a lot of money.’ It was ‘Let’s work together so we can serve mankind.’ ” Pleased with XanGo’s leadership, Andy and Brenda signed on to become one of the company’s very first distributors. Their decision reaped great rewards. “In under fi ve years with XanGo, I was making over five times the money I did in broadcasting,” Andy says. “Even after seven years, the leadership at XanGo treats us like we’re the most important people in the world to them.”

Design Your Own Future Ch aot ic schedule s a re mere memories for Andy and Brenda, replaced by leisurely days sitting by the lake near t h eir 7,0 0 0 - s q u a re - fo ot home in the majestic Ozark Mountains. “We can sit in the sunroom and watch the water while making phone c a lls or work ing on our laptops,” Brenda says. “Andy can be at the dock fishing and conducting a conference call at the same time.” Less stress a nd more income has decreased their worries as well. “Our first year, we paid off thousands of dollars in credit card debt,” Andy says. “The second year, the whole world seemed different because we weren’t worried about money all the time.” Brenda feels the relief as well. “This has given us emotional With their XanGo business, Andy and Brenda Willoughby ﬁnally have time to freedom,” she says. “We don’t play with their grandchildren. have the stress of worrying “Not only will XanGo pay us for the rest about how we will pay for something. If of our lives, but it’s an inheritance for our the washing machine breaks down, we just children and our children’s children,” Andy replace it; it’s no problem.” says. “This is a legacy that is going to go Having fewer worries relates to their on for generations. Kids will go to college, dreams about the future as well. “We’re in our missionaries will be supported, moms will late 50s, and we’re excited about the future!” be able to stay home with their children—all Andy says. “We’ll be entering our senior years because of our work with XanGo.” For the during an economic climate where many Willoughby family, XanGo has provided people don’t know if they’ll be able to retire. the promise for a future that surpasses Thanks to our work with XanGo, we have put expectations. “With XanGo, you literally get together our own retirement plan.” to design your own future,” Andy says. “You The beneﬁts of their work with XanGo will just pick out your dream and go for it.” SfH stretch beyond their retirement, however.

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Photography by Chuck Heiney

Leaders & Achievers

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John & Mary Spoelstra 100K Premier Select

Key to Success Dare to believe.

Michigan

Their Freedom Rings by Renée Jones

John Spoelstra had been a successful traditional small-business owner for 43 years. He worked hard, but when the economy soured, so did his business. Now with XanGo, John and his wife, Mary, are excited about the possibilities of freedom from stress, a great growing income and the future. “I know we can make a difference in the lives of many,” Mary says. Now Mary’s on a mission. “I want to share the principles of freedom, the way our country was founded, and the free enterprise system that made us a great country,” she says. She knows she can set people free, she says. “It’s not a handout; it’s a hand-up.” Hearts Afi re Once Mary understood what XanGo could do through network marketing, she saw a way to free her family. “I watched my father at age 62 sitting in his chair, head hung low and very depressed, or you could say hopeless, with very little pension and a mere $68 a month plus Social Security, and his future looked pretty bleak,” she says. Then

My heart was on fire for what I had to give. I knew I would never be the same. she introduced him to network marketing. “Wow—what a change!” she says. “I watched an old man become young again, with a spring in his step, a smile on his face and enthusiasm for life—all because he had hope for the future again.” There is hope in purpose and making a difference, she says. “My heart was on ﬁre for what I had to give. I knew I would never be the same.” Their son, Greg, was very successful, Mary says, but he was tied to an office 60 hours a week. “What a privilege it is to be able to

John and Mary are focusing on life’s important things, like spending time with their grandkids.

work with your own kids and watch them ﬁnd ﬁnancial freedom also,” she says. He’s working in XanGo full time from home now, and his wife, Amy, doesn’t have to work outside the home, so they have time for their children. “What a joy for parents to see,” Mary says. Products Make a Difference Not only did network marketing change their lives, but Mary says the products worked dramatically for her. “I’m not a doctor, nor do I pretend to be one, but I can tell you of my personal experiences with them,” she says. XanGo® Juice is not a medicine; it’s a juice from mangosteen, a food, she says. “Like Hippocrates, the father

of medicine, said, ‘Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.’ ” She started drinking XanGo Juice, and in two and a half weeks, she felt great. Now, John and Mary live on 100 wooded acres in Michigan, in a home that she designed and he helped build. It’s a playground for their family as well as many of their distributors. One of Mary’s passions is art, and she takes the grandkids into her studio to teach them how to work with clay and paint or just enjoy the art. “As you know, when you share something you love with others, well, the joy you already feel doubles,” Mary says. “We have the fortune to share much of our lifestyle with many.” SfH

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Photography by Marc Longwood

Leaders & Achievers

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Jim & Candy Webb

Key to Success

200K Premier Select

Find the right partners.

California

Corporate Slaves No More by Cherri Gann

Candy and Jim Webb say they used to be “corporate slaves” before they found network marketing some 20 years ago. Before becoming network marketers, these XanGo Million Dollar Club members ﬂourished in traditional careers—he was an architect, she an economist. Candy says “burning it at both ends” left them wishing for more control of their time. This, coupled with the fact that their high salaries made for a fat tax bill to Uncle Sam, spurred them to listen when their accountant suggested they look into the life-changing advantages of a home-based business. They decided to

We’re simply out to give people the opportunity of a lifetime. apply their accumulated business acumen to this industry, went on to build successful organizations with two companies, and never looked back. They learned about XanGo six years ago from dear friend and network marketing legend Bob Schmidt, with whom they had previously shared a fruitful partnership. Wellseasoned in this industry by then, Candy and Jim knew a sound opportunity when they saw one, and they recognized that in XanGo. The Webbs apply their solid business experience to gauging a company’s chance for success and look for three factors: a unique and exclusive product line, a lucrative compensation plan, and strong ownership. Seeing all three in XanGo, they quickly signed up. Both found an afﬁnity for the company’s flagship product, XanGo ® Juice. Candy, who suffered for years with painful and debilitating sciatica, found the juice’s antiinﬂammatory ingredients helpful, while Jim

thought it would aid his digestion. Eleviv, the company ’s ne w energ y supplement, is the c ouple’s c ur rent favorite. “I noticed more energy a nd higher focus and drive from the first day I started taking it,” Candy says. “I’ve never experienced anything like it in my life!” Mixing Business and Jim and Candy love to lead others to success with XanGo. Pleasure “We’ve enjoyed helping our children get to Jim says using their corporate backgrounds the level of financial success that we have,” to bring the same professional approach to Candy says. this business has served them well. Neither The couple also describes the pleasure has particularly defined roles—both are they’ve found in leading many others to comfortable with recruiting, training, orgafinancial success; six members of their organizing and presenting. “We’re simply out to nization are also in the Million Dollar Club. give people the opportunity of a lifetime,” Thanks to XanGo, they’ve enjoyed opporhe says. “We talk about it in relationship to tunities to travel to exotic locales such as other business models, the economy, future Phuket, Thailand, and Florence, Italy, for investments and retirement income.” both work and play. They travel to Hawaii at Not that these two have given serious least once a year, and have enjoyed vacations thought to retirement. They still work hard. in Aruba and the Cayman Islands as well. Though choosing to maintain a full schedule For solitude, Jim enjoys photography, and most days, they find complete satisfaction as a former architect, is naturally interested in working for themselves. Their work is in architecture. Candy, on the other hand, rewarding, but there’s still opportunity to take loves to write, and may even write a book pleasure in the fruits of their success. They’ve one day. formed wonderful friendships throughout their Jim and Candy say they love “the thrill of years in the industry. And with four married the game” and feel energized when there’s children and eight grandchildren, big family someone to help or introduce to XanGo. get-togethers are a joyful fact of life. With three “It would be boring to do anything else!” of their four children in XanGo with them, the Candy says. SfH Webbs say it’s akin to a family business.

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Photography by Chris Barr

Leaders & Achievers

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James & Sherry Sanford 200K Premier Select Nevada

Key to Success Seek out more successful, better-connected and harder-working people than yourself.

Desert Dreamers by Whitney Allen

If you see James and Sherry Sanford wa lk ing t heir Gre at Da ne ne a r t heir Las Vegas home, go ahead and ask what its name is. “XanGo is one of our best recruiting tools!” James says with a laugh. “When someone asks what ‘XanGo’ means, we’re able to start a conversation about the products and business opportunity. We’ve introduced the XanGo product and business to quite a few people who just stopped and asked about him.” A Better Way Sunny 90-degree Las Vegas weather, spending time with their granddaughters and “date nights” at world-class entertainment venues minutes away from their home—the Sanfords are living the life they dreamt of when they said their “I dos” some 38 years ago. But it hasn’t always been so idyllic. Before starting a career in network marketing, James was a musician, while also working in real estate and insurance sales. They were making ends meet, only able to spend little time with their children and even less traveling. There had to be a better way. “I realized that we got paid once for a sale, and the mortgage company got paid a servicing fee every month for up to 30 years,” Sherry says. “If there was a way to have that kind of income, we wanted it. That’s when we were introduced to network marketing—a way to get residual income.” Now network marketing veterans, James and Sherry have seen their share of failure and success. “We worked and failed miserably with three companies before finally becoming successful with the fourth,” James says. “But when we gave XanGo a serious look, we were just blown away. We enrolled immediately.

“The XanGo products are effective, the leadership team i s e x t r a or d i n a r y a n d t h e compensation plan is one of the best in the industry,” James continues. “I’ve been drinking XanGo® Juice every day since we started our business six years ago, and it’s remarkable. I’ve never felt better.” Mixing Business with Pleasure James and Sherry have built their successful XanGo business by following one simple rule: Recruit people who are m o r e s u c c e s s f u l , b e t t e rconnected and harder-working than yourself. “We realize that we don’t know everything, and that there are people who are far more talented than us, so we intentionally seek them out,” Sherry says. “And, as a result, James and Sherry named their dog XanGo, and he’s become the perfect we work with the most amazing conversation starter. people throughout the world— literally! We have 70,000 team members from is helping others realize their own dreams, 30 countries, meaning part of our ‘job’ is whether down the street or worlds away. traveling to visit and work with them. “We feel we are the luckiest people in the “We’ve always loved traveling, and with world because we get to make a living by XanGo, we get to see new locales and making a difference,” James says. “Our ‘job’ meet interesting people and have fun—all is to help people achieve their dreams.” the while building our business,” Sherry “A nd t hrough t he X a nGo Goodness continues. “It has just been this great opporcharity, we’ve helped children and families tunity that’s unlike anything else we’ve seen living in poverty halfway around the world. in our years in network marketing.” We’ve made a difference in their lives, even though we’ve never met and live thousands Dream Builders of miles apart,” Sherry says. “The energy of Though the time and ﬁnancial freedoms Las Vegas is that anything you can dream of can become reality, even creating Venice in are great, the Sanfords say, for them, the most the middle of the desert.” SfH rewarding part of having a XanGo business

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Photography by Michael Cogliantry

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Glenn & Gayla Sparks 200K Premier Select Oregon

Key to Success Treat your business investment seriously.

Turning Over a New Life by Deborah R. Huso

When Glenn and Gayla Sparks sold their Dallas health club 11 years ago to move to a sprawling 30-acre property in southern Oregon, they anticipated a life of leisure and happiness in the countryside with their children. They felt the respite from the corporate grind was well-deserved. After their last two children were born, both with Down syndrome, Gayla had to give up her role in the family business to stay home, and Glenn found himself working 80-hour weeks to keep up. “It wasn’t fun anymore,” Glenn says of the long workweeks. The couple tried ﬁnancing the club for a new owner so they could live off the monthly payments. But six years ago, the club owner defaulted on the loan. “I didn’t know how we were going to make it,” Glenn says. “Those payments on the club had been our only source of income.” Glenn had to return to Dallas to try to resell the health club to a new buyer, while Gayla worked long hours as a personal trainer out of their Oregon home, while also being a full-time mom. Suffering from ﬁbromyalgia, Gayla was in constant pain, consistently tired and exceedingly depressed. “We were in such a mess,” Glenn says, “and we worried we were going to lose our home.” “Health and wellness had always been our forté,” Gayla says, “but no matter what I did, I couldn’t keep my health. I was so sick; I felt like I was dying.” Enter XanGo Then a family friend introduced the husband and wife to XanGo® Juice, sending them a bottle of the juice to try. The bottle arrived when Gayla was having a particularly bad day physically. Gayla didn’t know anything about the juice, but she guzzled it down. “In 45 minutes, I noticed my body feeling better,” she explains. “It took the

edge off and allowed me to engage my family that needed me.” The couple ordered more of the juice— even though Glenn was initially skeptical. “I’d tried network marketing before and had always spent more money than I made,” he says. But there was something different about this product. “I loved the taste of the juice!” Glenn says. “And Gayla’s response really got my attention.” Glenn, whose undergraduate degree is in premedical science, began doing research on his own, and discovered 30 years of independent studies on the mangosteen fruit from which XanGo Juice is made. “It had been used for centuries in traditional medicine in Southeast Asia,” he says. The couple went out on a limb and decided to give this network marketing opportunity a try. Glenn admits they really felt it was their last chance to save themselves ﬁ nancially. “We made a prayerful decision to give this a sincere effort,” Glenn says, knowing they faced the obstacle of being in a remote location 60 miles from the nearest major town. So they started introducing XanGo to family and friends, building a full-time income from the business within four months. “Gayla didn’t have to get up to meet with ﬁtness clients at 4:30 a.m. anymore,” Glenn says. “It was an incredible load off my life,” Gayla adds. Not only were she and Glenn on their way to becoming financially secure again, but she was experiencing a newfound sense of health and well-being. They’ve also been so successful in promoting the XanGo products and business opportunities (including the Glimpse™ skin care line that Gayla loves) that they no longer worry about money and have earned numerous XanGo trips to places like Thailand, Hawaii and Italy.

Gayla and Glenn don’t miss the 80-hour workweeks of their past.

Glen n ad mit s t he X a nG o bu sine ss opportunity has changed their lives. “It’s refreshing to offer a message of hope and encouragement,” he says. “We don’t have to participate in the gloom and doom.” SfH

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Opportunity Without Borders Successful business builders in Mexico continue to climb the ranks of XanGo’s elite achievers. SfH Estela Salinas 500K Mexico With 18 years’ experience in network marketing, Estela Salinas knows a good thing when she sees it. And, in her opinion, XanGo has three key elements that make it successful

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as a national and international business. First and foremost are the company products. “They are the key,” says Estela, “and are without comparison in the market. The products work and work fast. And consumers have reason to use them frequently because they work so well. The second-most important factor for XanGo’s international growth, according to Estela, is “the founders’ integrity and transparency in how they handle the business. This is extremely important to distributors. They have kept their word. Everything they have promised, including payments under the compensation plan, has become a reality.” This brings us to the third-most important element, critical to XanGo’s tremendous growth in the international arena. “Two of the founders,” says Estela, “have previous experience in network marketing and know ﬁrsthand what it means to be a distributor.” Summing up, she shares: “The products work extremely well; the founders and leaders inspire trust; they have put together the best compensation plan in the industry.”

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Elizabeth Salinas 200K Mexico For years, Elizabeth Salinas had not felt well, but doctors couldn’t determine what was wrong. Wanting to improve her health, she tried XanGo’s products and used them for nine months. The results, she says, were “amazing. I felt so much better! There was a clear difference in how I felt after taking the products.” She then decided to commit four months to sharing her positive experience with others while building a business. “I had no prior networking experience. I thought my new venture would just be part-time, and I didn’t expect to have the successful business I have today,” Elizabeth says. “I’m a fan. I’m a kind of ‘evangelist’ for XanGo now. I’m the perfect example of why it is thriving in our country and all over the world,” she says. “Once I tried the products and felt the difference, I knew I had to share this wonderful experience with others.” But the products were just the beginning of her success. Elizabeth is equally pleased with the company’s compensation plan, the professionalism of the corporate employees, and the integrity of XanGo’s six founders. “They are honest, and they radiate conﬁdence and trustworthiness,” she says. “They also have the experience, know-how and vision to make this business prosper and become the international treasure that we already know it is.”

Diego Dreyfus and Regina Merino 200K Mexico “XanGo succeeds across borders,” Diego Dreyfus says from Cancún, as he enthusiastically explains why Mexico is XanGo’s second-largest market worldwide: “First, there is a need for the products. Second, Latinos are dreamers and friendly. Friendship and trust are intrinsic to our culture. XanGo allows us to work at a comfort level rarely found in many other business models.” According to Diego and wife Regina Merino, XanGo thrives not only because of its products, its leaders and the vision of its founders, but also because it’s a total package. “I compare it, in a way, to Starbucks,” Diego says. “The coffee—the product—is just the beginning of the experience. There’s also the ambiance, the comfortable chairs and the convenience of Wi-Fi. You feel at home,” he says. “We feel comfortable and at home with XanGo. The product and its presentation are excellent, including details like the logo, the bottle design, the Web site and much more, all which express and deﬁ ne XanGo.” Regina and Diego agree that, for them, XanGo has become a lifestyle. “It has given me back my dreams!” Regina says. “People are waking up to a new reality and looking for change,” she continues. “With XanGo, you can make your dreams a reality, regardless of your circumstances or geographic location.”

Lilia del Rayo and Alfredo López 200K Mexico “XanGo is thriving in Mexico!” Lilia del Rayo says. “It is a company with a plan. The company’s executive team knows the industry very well, and they are generating great momentum at the international level.” Alfredo López agrees: “XanGo is having tremendous growth in Mexico and is in the perfect position to extend that growth to other countries.” And this couple is in a position to know. Alfredo previously owned an international construction company doing business in Mexico, Venezuela and the United States. Eight years ago, his company was shut down due to a strike, and Alfredo had to start from zero. Having witnessed his wife Lilia’s success in network marketing, he and Lilia decided to start a joint business venture and chose XanGo. The couple attributes the explosive growth of their XanGo business, in part, to excellent mentors, including their sponsor, 200K Eliseo Lee. In addition, Lilia says, “XanGo has a mission, a vision, great products and a fair compensation plan.” “They are transparent and always pay on time,” Alfredo adds. “This is the company we will be associated with for the rest of our lives.”

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The

Goodness

Movement by Nicole Bywater

XanGo’s hands-on approach to charitable giving allows everyone in the company to be part of its mission to make the world a better place.

ent Wood and Joe Morton

spent a few days recently in a place you might not expect to ﬁnd the co-founders of a company that’s made more than $1.5 billion in sales in seven years: They were in Guadalajara, Mexico, working side by side with medical and nonmedical volunteers, as well as local XanGo distributors. The founders were in Mexico as partners with the charitable organization Operation Smile, a worldwide children’s medical charity dedicated to helping improve the lives of children born with cleft lips, cleft palates and other facial deformities. This is the third mission in 18 months in which XanGo has been a title sponsor, and more than 300 children have received life-changing corrective surgeries through these missions. And, this time around, the founders brought their teenagers with them. “We went on a mission last year and spent the whole week wishing we’d brought the kids with us,” says Kent from a hotel lobby in Mazatlan, VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 103

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THE GOODNESS MOVEMENT

“It’s very rare to go through a day here at XanGo without some mention of a mission or a charitable project that people are working on—and I like that.” —XanGo Co-Founder Gordon Morton Mexico. “This has been a wonderful experience for them, especially. They’re certainly good kids, but they have a lot of luxuries, and we live a pretty easy life in comparison to many of the people we’ve been meeting here.” The volunteers, including Kent and his daughters, Joe and his son, several staff members from XanGo’s corporate ofﬁce and dozens of local XanGo representatives, comforted the children and their families who were awaiting surgery and pitched in wherever they could to help.

“One of the last children we saw this morning was a 7-month-old born with only one eye, which is blind; a badly deformed nose; and a hole where his upper lip and palate should be,” Kent says. “For my daughters to hold that baby and think about their 9-month-old sister at home makes a pretty loud statement that we’re lucky people who have an obligation to do more than just show up and wonder what’s in it for us.” Committed to Helping That obligation to help others lies at the core of XanGo’s business philosophy. At home and around the globe, the company has donated many millions of dollars and countless man-hours to a wide variety of charitable causes since the company’s inception seven years ago.

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The company’s charitable program, known as the XanGo Goodness Movement, is a unique program allowing everyone in the company— from top executives to distributors, employees and even consumers— to be part of XanGo’s commitment to giving back. “The Goodness Movement really gets people engaged in our business at an emotional level,” says XanGo Co-Founder Gordon Morton. “I want to feel good about the company I work for, and I think others do, too. It’s nice to have a sense of pride that you’re contributing to the betterment of society.” This commitment of charitable giving has been a part of XanGo since it was founded seven years ago. “We were like most startups with very humble beginnings,” Gordon says. “But the charitable contribution has always been hard-wired into our company.” And Gordon remembers that 2002 was also a bad year for the business world: “This was when companies like Enron and WorldCom were in the news as huge examples of corporate greed. We were raising capital at the time, and many were leery of investing in business. But that charitable work was part of our business package, and, thankfully, we had some investors who believed in our worldview.” While XanGo’s charitable giving could be considered modest when the company began, as it has grown, so has the number of charities it’s been able to help. “When we were still a pretty small company, the impact we had was less obvious, but, boy, has it snowballed since then,” Gordon says. “Once you get exposed to something and see the incremental changes that, bit by bit, become monumental, it makes you want to do more.” Today, XanGo partners with more than 14 national and international organizations, all of which provide a meaningful and measureable impact on the world. Many of these charities focus on children, a cause particularly close to the heart of Gordon, a father of three. “Most people around the world can agree on children’s charities,” he says. “No matter where you travel, one of the ﬁrst points of connection you make with someone comes from talking about your kids, even in the humblest of situations. That helps you discover pretty quickly that most people are more alike than they are different.”

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Rolling Up Their Sleeves XanGo’s approach to giving is very hands-on. Not content to simply write checks and hope for the best, XanGo executives believe in rolling up their sleeves and getting involved. Several of the company’s founders have been on missions, such as the one Kent Wood and Joe Morton did in Mexico. Gordon Morton was recently involved in the building of a soccer field, a school, and drinking water and sanitation facilities in a village in Ghana, improving the quality of life for the villagers. Part of a five-year ongoing project that holistically addresses the needs of the villagers, with their input and labor, the result has become a model for sustainable development that will be expanded to India, China and countries in South America, at the invitation of their governments. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina and its destructive effects in 2005, XanGo teamed up with NFL Quarterback Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints on the Rebuilding Dreams in New Orleans project. Right after the devastating tsunami of 2004, XanGo teamed up with a German-based organization and set about rebuilding a Thai fishing village decimated in the disaster.

“I don’t think that, from our original business plan, any one of us could have had a full vision of what the Goodness Movement has become.” —XanGo Co-Founder Kent Wood More recently, XanGo’s home office in Utah sponsored its Best Buddies Day. The fifth such event, and held on the company’s seventh anniversary, XanGo employees and distributors teamed to raise more than $8,000 through a 5K run/1K walk. This annual event raises funds for a nonprofit organization dedicated to enhancing the lives of people with intellectual disabilities. The office really rallies around

the event, says Gordon, which allows students from the local Best Buddies chapter to partner with a XanGo employee “buddy” for a day to learn about their job and spend quality time together. Many XanGo employees remain in contact with their buddies many years after the initial introduction. In addition, full-time employees at the home ofﬁce are encouraged to spread XanGo goodness through a program that reimburses them for two hours a month spent volunteering for their own favorite causes. “It’s very rare to go through a day here at XanGo without some mention of a mission or a charitable project that people are working on—and I like that,” Gordon says. “It makes for a really great balance of business and humanities.” The reaction to these charitable activities from XanGo distributors has been remarkable, says. “I’ll give updates on Twitter and Facebook on various charit a ble t hings t h at we’re doing, and I’ll get more responses on those than I do for some pretty significant business results—that tells me that our distributors are very passionate about this part of XanGo.” Distributing Meal Packs More than 5,000 XanGo distributors participate in the company’s Meal Pack program, which began two years ago and enables anyone in the company to make a positive impact on the welfare of children and families across the globe. For $45 or $90, including shipping, distributors provide either 17 or 35 meals in extremely poverty-stricken areas of the world such as El Salvador, Ghana, Haiti, Kenya, Myanmar and Zimbabwe. The special meal pack consists of a dry-powder formulation for the severely malnourished and is distributed by AmeriCares, a nonproﬁt disaster relief and humanitarian aid organization. To date, nearly 800,000 meals have been donated by XanGo distributors. The global impact that has been made thanks to the distributors’ involvement is not lost on Kent. “I don’t think that, from our original business plan, any one of us could have had a full vision of what the Goodness Movement has become,” he says. “I think I envisioned that the founders and maybe some of our employees would get passionate about it, but I underestimated the level of excitement that our distributors would have for this aspect of our business.” That excitement and involvement is only expected to grow as the company continues to succeed. “We’re a 7-year-old company that has a lot of goals ahead of us,” Kent says. “We really look forward to what we can continue to accomplish as our volume and the number of distributors increase and we can continue to touch more worthwhile causes.” SfH VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 105

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Go Pro with

XanGo How XGoPro Is Revolutionizing the Way XanGo Distributors Run Their Businesses by David Lee

There are a few people in our lives whom we always listen to—our parents, our teachers, our doctors, our mentors. ntors. XanGo distributors are adding business-building pro John ohn Godzich to that list. Godzich, who has more than 30 years’ experience in network marketing, founded XGoPro—a third-party training systems stems company that is working exclusively with XanGo to help distributors build their businesses. When done correctly, training systems, such ass Godzich’s, help create more cohesive distributor teams, but they’re not one-size-fits-all applications. “It was important to get a feel for what XanGo was all about rather than just trying to force a cookie-cutter system,” Godzich says. “I spent quite a bit of time in the first year just traveling, speaking and spending time with the field to understand the specificity of the culture of XanGo.” That custom approach helped him achieve the kind of unification that XanGo had been searching for. With h distributors all over the globe, naturally, many of them em tend to create their own systems and practices. Some work. Some fail. “The concept here is that we have industry gurus who ho understand the basics of an overall system, and then, within that system, we have all of our leaders participating and sharing best practices for how to manage and how to grow and build your business,” says XanGo CEO Robert Conlee. “The ultimate benefit is a totally unified distributor force.”

»What the Pros Know • Skip the Trial and Error. Learn from those who have gone before you, and learn from their successes and mistakes. These mentors know what works and what doesn’t, so skip your personal trial-and-error methods and follow a mentor’s success. • Immerse Yourself. Learning doesn’t have to take place in a stuffy conference room; it can happen anywhere. CDs, DVDs and MP3s are great portable methods of learning. • Don’t Reinvent the Wheel. Take advantage of the paths paved before you. Use existing training methods to train others instead of creating your own. Use Web site templates that offer clean presentations and consistent information instead of building a site from scratch.

The XGoPro Way So, what exactly is XGoPro? It’s a training system that helps distributors effectively build their businesses. Whether you are an experienced network marketer or are brand-new to the concept,

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What Business Builders Are Saying About XanGo’s XGoPro Training Program “We are seeing the difference in our team after only a few exposures to the training. We have seen an increase in confidence and vision in both our leaders and new people. I believe that the XGoPro system has the ability to impact our business over the next months and years more than any other thing we have done to date!” — Eric and Heidi Welch, 200K Premier Select “I appreciate the tremendous amount of wisdom that John Godzich brings to XanGo. He has a great understanding of people, and I believe his leadership will guide XanGo to new heights that we can only imagine. Jim and I appreciate John and his donation to our business and the success of all of our distributors.” — Priscilla Harrison, 200K Premier Select “I am so excited about XGoPro. We now have the opportunity to get people started and on their way to success, quicker and more effectively than ever before!” — Marlene Brice, 100K Premier Select

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training systems such as XGoPro are helpful tools for building your new home-based business. The starter kit includes a booklet titled It Starts with You that covers the foundational principles of the system. Also in the kit are four CDs that lay the groundwork for the program’s philosophy:

CD 1: The Promise and Safety of the System CD 2: Promote, Promote, Promote CD 3: Keeping the People You’ve Got CD 4: The Right Person, in the Right Place, at the Right Time Members also receive weekly CDs that contain various XanGo success stories, product testimonials, leadership training and business-building tips—all from real XanGo distributors who want to help others build their businesses. That kind of personal communication from distributors who have gained experience through trial and error is one of the main aspects of XGoPro that make it so appealing. “People want access to that kind of information, but they don’t know where to get it,” Conlee says. “They either have to travel a long way to see one leader somewhere in some other line who they hear is doing well, or they can get it every week in an easy-to-digest and easy-to-listen-to format.”

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»What do you need when you start a new venture? Training. XGoPro is the complete training package you need.

Even the weekly CDs have a philosophy all their own. XGoPro has a proprietary structure for creating the CDs, focusing on positive messages instead of leading with the negative, or the problem. “You can hook people with a problem, but you won’t keep them,” Godzich says. “It’s the same thing when you watch television. The negative stuff attracts you very quickly, but you get tired of it and you want to get away from it. If you start with a vision, or with a positive aspect, it’s much easier for people to listen to the problems and the solution.” The training CDs are designed to resonate with a wide variety of personalities, whether they are more product-oriented or businessoriented. Some may take a more technical approach to a business opportunity, while others tend to take a more emotional approach. “We don’t try to create an artiﬁcial diversity, because we need to base it on the reality of true success,” Godzich says. “The advantage we have with XanGo is that we have incredible success stories, both on the product side as well as the business side.” The third main tool that XGoPro members receive is their own replicated MyMangosteen.com Web site. This Web site allows distributors to keep in contact with their support lines, sign up new XanGo distributors, and even send short video clips to others in their network to their e-mail inbox or mobile devices. Even after less than a year of producing training systems for XanGo, Godzich says the distributor feedback has been incredible. “We have a retention rate that is above 90 percent, which is humongous right now,” he says.

According to Conlee, nearly 100 percent of XanGo’s top leaders are working with XGoPro to make sure their organizations are utilizing the proper tactics and best practices. The XGoPro Philosophy To Godzich, working with others to build a successful business is about understanding motivations and behaviors, which is the foundation for a new aspect of the XGoPro training systems called The Vital Signs. It focuses on and encourages the monitoring of growth, but with an unconventional approach. Godzich points out that people have become very goal-oriented, but, oftentimes, those goals are quickly abandoned. He believes he has found a better approach, called reverse engineering. “Instead of having a tactical approach to get where you want to be, you have a strategic approach,” he explains. “You go into the future, you establish who you want to be, and then you analyze, going backward, every single step that needs to be taken along the way.” The idea with this philosophy is to create a clear focus for distributors in order to maintain consistent and steady growth. Godzich relates it to the way an airplane flies, guided by a global positioning system. The plane’s autopilot is constantly correcting the flight due to crosswinds and other factors that would otherwise make the plane go off course. “If we have a GPS system that creates expected results and desired outcomes, in the long run, it will work,” Godzich says. “We can develop the best plan, but if we start implementing the plan based only off of where we are, rather than where we want to go, the first time we have a crosswind, we’re off course.” Creating the Culture Godzich doesn’t like the word prospects. When referring to potential enrollees, he prefers the term candidates. In fact, there are several terms he prefers, such as support lines or success lines, referring to the network marketing business structure. As he puts it, “Creating a good system is creating a good culture.” The key is to look for people who are the right fit for the business at a given time—in other words, good candidates. That doesn’t mean that others aren’t right for the business altogether, but he stresses the importance of understanding people’s behaviors in order to help them succeed. “The system is not just about getting people in,” Godzich says of the XGoPro training. “It’s about keeping them in. There’s a personal-growth aspect to the system which will sustain them. It will eventually make them better in other areas of their lives as well. The inherent value of the system is that it allows them to stay in until they are ready to build it. Retention and personal growth are as important as anything.” The XGoPro system isn’t about making people into something they’re not. In fact, it’s just the opposite. “It’s not a manipulative ABC program that gets you to do something against your will,” Godzich says. “It’s not trying to transform you. It’s helping you become a better you—helping you become what you’ve always known you could be.” SfH VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 109

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Worlds of

Encouragement XanGo knows how to reward its distributorsâ&#x20AC;&#x201D; by giving them experiences they never dreamed of.

by David Lee

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Worlds of ENCOURAGEMENT

“T

rip of a lifetime.” “Magic, absolutely magic.” “Everyone has to get here.” Such proclamations are often made by XanGo distributors while riding an elephant in Thailand or during an afternoon of parasailing in Hawaii. XanGo calls its distributors the “driving force,” and the company shows its appreciation by treating qualifying distributors to all-expenses-paid trips to some of the top vacation destinations in the world. In fact, everyone who achieves a certain level gets to attend, no questions asked. At XanGo, the personal, face-to-face relationship with distributors is crucial to its success.

The XanGo Way Why not receive business tips and direction from the side of a resort pool? Why not tune into some inspiring words after riding atop an elephant? With XanGo, you can have your cake and eat it, too. “It’s all about collaboration,” says Senior Vice President of Distributor Relations Scott Smith. “That is the focus of what we do here at XanGo.” XanGo kicks off each year with the Elite Summit retreat for 100K leaders and above. Airfare and hotel expenses are on XanGo. “We make a lot of announcements just for them and lay out the plan for the upcoming year,” Smith says. “It gives them a head start, and it’s a great chance for them to set their goals for the year.” Leadership retreats are held in places like Asia, Australia, Mexico, Europe and Canada. These getaways are for those distributors beyond the 20K level. Distributors meet with XanGo corporate executives, as well as other business builders, to share tips and to get to know each other on a more personal level. Distributors who hit the Premier Select rank are treated to a weeklong, all-expenses-paid trip to Phuket, Thailand. While in Thailand—where the mangosteen fruit was discovered—distributors can sample as much

“It’s all about collaboration. That is the focus of what we do here at XanGo.” —Scott Smith, Senior VP of Distributor Relations of the exotic fruit as they wish. They go to a mangosteen farm to see how it is harvested. They also get to ride elephants, see monkeys, enjoy the beach, go parasailing and even go snorkeling. “You’ve just gotta join us and have a wonderful time on your trip to Thailand or Europe!” 200K Distributor Carol Ferrier says to encourage fellow XanGo distributors. “Wherever your heart desires, XanGo can take you there.” The Elevation Retreat is an annual excursion to Hawaii with Premier Select and higher members and their families. Also among the crowd are XanGo founders and executives, who always attend these elite trips.

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“Italy was like a postcard everywhere I looked,” says 500K distributor Estela Salinas of Mexico. “It’s unbelievable. You need to work hard—you deserve this!” New 500K members have been kicking it up in France, a relatively new trip for XanGo. On the last adventure, 500Ks got to take a private

“Trip of a lifetime. Magic, absolutely magic. Everyone has to get here.” “We designed these incentives to reward those who are doing the work that boosts the needle for the company and the distributors,” Smith says. And boosting it they are. The crème de la crème of trips are the 200K and 500K getaways. Each time there is a new group of 200Ks, they are swept away to a location that would be at the top of anyone’s vacation destination list. Everything, from food to entertainment, is on XanGo’s dime. “Every time we have a new group of 200Ks, we take them to Italy,” Smith says. “That trip is just out of this world. We go well beyond what anyone could ever expect for a one-week trip in Italy.”

helicopter tour over the Eiffel Tower, tour Versailles and the Louvre, and stay in a five-star Palace Resort. And the best part is, everyone who achieves the rank gets to go. Everyone. This is not a top-10 sort of thing. “This all comes from the culture that our founders have set up,” Smith says of these unique rewards. “It’s what they do, and we just follow suit. We provide the opportunity to take these leaders on these trips, and, for us at corporate, we can talk with them about ideas we’ve heard from the field and get their feedback, while also getting other ideas from them.” XanGo also brings a videographer on the trips to capture everyone having a great time. The videos are then used to promote the events and give motivation to those distributors who are working their way up to these elite levels. Sending their distributors on vac at ion s of a lifetime isn’t the only way XanGo shows its appreciation. The company also recently decided to implement a health insurance benefit for all distributors, regardless of their rank. “We decided that anyone, a s lo n g a s t h e y a re a distributor, can sign up for this health insurance, no restrictions,” Smith says. XanGo is always thinking up different promotions and rewards, because motivating distributors creates a cult ure of t r u st a nd teamwork. And that equals success for everyone. SfH VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 113

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Home OfďŹ ce At Your Service by David Lee

XanGo is working hand in hand with its distributors to give them the unique tools and support they need to succeed.

XanGo CEO Robert Conlee is probably receiving a phone call, text message or e-mail from a XanGo distributor right now. All distributors have his personal contact information, which is all part of the culture and close relationship that XanGo wants to establish with its distributor force. 114

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“It’s not a corporate vs. distributor mentality at all,” Conlee says. “We’re all on the same team; we just have different roles. As we are providing service to them, we are really working together to ﬁnd a solution they might be seeking.” When it comes to working with its distributors, the company’s theme is “Legendary Experiences,” and it’s been implemented into nearly every aspect of operations, including the many distributor support systems, and even within the corporate building near Salt Lake City. “When [our distributors] interact with us, they remember that it was the best interaction they’ve ever had from a service standpoint with any company or agency they’ve ever worked with,” Conlee says. “Our tagline is ‘Life as it should be,’ meaning that, when you experience and have interactions with XanGo, you walk away saying, ‘Well, that’s the way it should be.’ ”

Maximum Support XanGo has more than 200 people working in call centers around the world, including Utah, Malaysia, Japan and Taiwan. According to Smith, there is someone working in a call center 24 hours a day, seven days a week. “We try to provide service that our distributors will remember,” Smith says. “We want our distributors to feel like we have treated them better than any other company in the world.” Call center staffers do everything, from taking product orders to answering complicated compensation plan questions. Smith says that staffers are not just trained to do one or two things, but have to be prepared for a wide range of calls and questions. XanGo knows that a knowledgeable and prepared call staff is crucial for helping distributors build their business. “We have about 275 employees who have direct responsibility to work with distributors and make sure we’re meeting their needs and exceeding their expect ations,” Smit h says. “Everything we do is a collaboration with our distributors.” The Elite Services Group was created to assist those business builders who have reached a Premier achievement level. Essentially, each of those distributors is assigned a personal, on-demand support line that will answer any questions or provide other assistance at any time. Another way XanGo seeks to make life easier for its distributors is by handling all shipping and fulﬁllment. No need for distributors to keep a garage full of inventory or have to deliver products themselves. Product orders are made by customers and sent directly to them. “On our largest sales days of the month, we are sending more than 50 semi-trucks full of product out the door,” Smith says. The company recently implemented a preferred customer program for those looking to just use XanGo products, but who might not yet be ready to build a business. Customers can benefit from the wholesale price as long as they commit to a monthly auto-ship order. This way, they still have experience using the products and can decide to make it a business down the road if they wish. XanGo is constantly exploring ways to create a stronger and more beneﬁcial environment for its distributors, whether it is useful tools on site at its headquarters or support systems that serve as lifelines available around the clock. XanGo sees its growing distributor force as the lifeblood that keeps the company moving forward. Conlee’s vision is one big team pushing for the common goal. “We are very hands-on,” he says of the company’s relationship with its distributor force. “They know they can ask us to help them with anything, and we can ask them to help us. It’s a two-way street.” SfH

“We want our distributors to feel like we have treated them better than any other company in the world.”

—Scott Smith, XanGo Senior VP of Distributor Services If You Build It, They Will Come Walk into XanGo headquarters, and you are likely to see distributors holding meetings, handing out product samples or maybe even wrapped up in a competitive game of foosball. “This building was built for our distributors,” says Senior VP of Distributor Relations Scott Smith of XanGo’s headquarters. And that’s not corporate lingo; Smith literally means that the building was created as a tool for distributors to use. The building features customizable meeting rooms, juice bars and even on-site areas with toys and activities where kids can play while their parents conduct business. “This theme of ‘Legendary Experiences’ is driven into every aspect of our company,” Smith says. “Even when you walk into our lobby, we want that to be a legendary experience.” Smith says that distributor meetings and presentations are taking place at least three or four days a week. He loves walking through the building and seeing meetings being conducted. Several rooms were built for this purpose, including a smaller, more personal and relaxed conference room. Larger rooms include the Breakthrough Boardroom, which can hold around 10 to 12 people. The Million Dollar Club Room can hold a much larger crowd, and it even can be divided up into two or three smaller rooms. It features top-of-the-line LCD screens and audio equipment for presentations. Conlee also points out that the company ﬁlms most of its videos in the building, which distributors often recognize. It also provides an interesting talking point when distributors are showing videos to potential customers.

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OFFICE

SPACE

Organize Your Home Two at a Time T

ake two! That is, take two organizing tips for every room in your home:

Garage Set up activity zones in the garage. For example, group garden tools in one spot, sporting goods in another, and tools in their own area. Using the walls (vertical space) and the ceiling (overhead storage) will help you make better use of the space you do have within your garage. Use various storage solutions such as pegboards, containers (see-through containers with labels make it easy), and open crates, which allow easy access and are easy to clean. Do not use cardboard boxes because of possible water damage, mold and bugs. Kitchen Clear off your countertops by putting away hardly used appliances in drawers or cabinets. Donate unused appliances to charity or a friend who could use them. Arrange zones or stations in the kitchen to make your life simpler and easier. For example, coffee, filters, mugs and the coffeemaker should be near each other to make it easy and convenient to make coffee in the morning. Another zone may be your baking zone; include baking supplies such as flour and sugar, cookie sheets, measuring cups, etc. Dining Room Is there always stuff piled up on your dining room table? Determine what the stuff is and how you can conquer the clutter so you and your family can sit down and share a meal. For example, do you use the table for hobbies such as scrapbooking? Make sure you have a solution for your hobby supplies, such as a plastic drawer system on wheels. Does your table get piled with mail and other papers? Designate a basket or wall folder system to hold papers, magazines and newspapers. Make sure you dump junk mail as soon as it arrives. Empty the basket on a daily basis. Do you use a china cabinet for fine china you never use? Try storing your everyday dishes (maybe even plastic dishes that are within your kids’ reach) for the dishes you actually use. Store the fine china away for special occasions. Living or Family Room Can you use multipurpose furniture, such as coffee tables, storage cubes or ottomans with storage inside for children’s toys,

extra blankets and pillows, or board games? These space savers are great for double-duty furniture. List all the purposes and activities that will take place in the room. Divide your living room into zones. Find storage solutions for your TV and DVDs. Store DVDs or CDs in a cabinet or shelving system that will help keep out dust. Keep all remotes in a basket in a central location. Office Keep most-often-used items within arm’s reach. For example, items used daily, such as pens and pencils, a stapler and your calendar, should be kept on your desk, while items such as scotch tape and paper clips that may only be used occasionally can be kept in a nearby drawer. Find an area to store extra supplies, such as in a closet organization system, a shelving system or plastic drawers. Sort and ﬁle paperwork. For sorting large amounts of paperwork, the RAFT method can be useful: R for papers that need to be Read, A for papers that need to be Acted upon, F for papers that should be Filed, and T for papers that can be Trashed, such as junk mail. SfH

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ADVISOR

KEN BLANCHARD

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The Secret Ken Blanchard teaches the answer to the question we all have—What makes a good leader? by K. Shelby Skrhak

People who want to be great leaders must embrace an attitude of service to others.

Everything rises and falls on leadership. That’s what legendary author of The One Minute Manager Ken Blanchard says so simply. But anyone who’s been in a newly landed management or leadership position knows leadership is easier said than done. In this parable written in the fashion of Manager that made it such a quick and easy, but invaluable, read, The Secret: What Great Leaders Know—and Do introduces readers to Debbie, a newly promoted project manager who works closely with sales and corporate clients. “How can leadership be this hard?” the ﬁrst paragraph of the brief 125-page book opens. “One year ago today was the happiest day of my life. I had arrived! Only four years out of college, and I had been selected to move into a leadership position. I knew I could handle the job. Whatever products or services were promised to customers, I was supposed to deliver. And if I do say so myself, I was good at getting

clients what they needed. I received all kinds of kudos for my ability to develop outstanding client relations. I was sure I could make my team do the same. “A year ago, I was elated; today, I am holding on for dear life and my job may be at risk. What happened? What went wrong?” Debbie describes her dilemma, tracking the milestones that led from her star status to her team’s lackluster performance using a trick her boss taught her.

Every month, take a step back and do three things: 1. Assess what has happened. 2. Afﬁrm what was working. 3. Make adjustments as needed. What Is a Leader? Gently revealing her naivety, Debbie is asked to explain what a leader is—which she admits she had never stopped to consider, despite her career objective of becoming

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ADVISOR

KEN BLANCHARD

one. Blanchard explains that a leader is someone more than the person in charge, or the person in a position whom others report to. And while a leader may very well be “the person who makes things happen,” as Debbie philosophizes, the book explains that definition is just one aspect of the many traits of a leader. Blanchard describes Debbie’s dilemma as she joins her company’s optional mentoring program and is paired with the company president as her mentor. With little small talk, the book’s main character gets down to the point: She asks him, “What is the secret of great leaders?” Blanchard weaves the answer of key leadership principles into the book’s remaining narrative.

Leadership Is Not a Level In the vein of Mark Sanborn’s You Don’t Need a Title to Be a Leader, Blanchard explains that true leadership has nothing to do with one’s level in an organization. “There are many individuals in the world who don’t hold leadership positions, yet they’re providing leadership all the time; just as there are many others who hold leadership positions, and they are not exerting much leadership at all,” Blanchard writes. He explains t hat leadership is a lot like an iceberg. There are two primary components: what you can see above the waterline and what you can’t see, what’s below the water. Whereas only 20 percent of the iceberg is visible above the water, so is

A leader’s SKILLS or “Doing”

A leader’s CHARACTER or “Being”

The Changing Deﬁnition of LEADERSHIP For years, The Ken Blanchard Companies® has defined leadership as an influence process. We believed that anytime you tried to influence the thoughts and actions of others toward goal accomplishment in either your personal or professional life, you were engaging in leadership. In recent years, The Ken Blanchard Companies has changed its definition of leadership to “the capacity to influence others by unleashing the potential and power of people and organizations for the greater good.”

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You must gain the trust of your people. If you don’t have their trust, you’ll never be a great leader.

leadership. “Leadership is more about what others don’t see than what they do see,” Blanchard says. He likens what’s below the water to a leader’s character, or his “being.” What’s above the water are a leader’s skills, or his “doing.” Servant Leadership Revisiting the core question, “ W hat makes a great leader?” Blanchard explores the concept of servant leadership through his characters.

Blanchard says, “Great leaders serve,” using the following acronym to explain: • See the Future: Create a compelling vision for your team. • Engage and Develop Others: Have the right people in the right roles. • Reinvent Continuously: Realize that if you stop learning, you stop leading. • Value Results and Relationships: Great leaders recognize you must value both. • Embody the Values: Genuine leadership is built on trust.

Coupling servant leadership with several key principles in the book, Blanchard successfully teaches the leadership lessons of those who are successful, as well as those more troubled leaders. What Blanchard succinctly demonstrates is that truly great leaders don’t let their egos get in the way; the task supersedes the individual. In this case, Debbie is taught to be a “serving leader” rather than a “self-serving leader.” Blanchard explains that the greatest leaders know that delegating responsibility and

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ADVISOR

KEN BLANCHARD

A key question you must continuously ask yourself is, “Am I a serving leader or a selfserving leader?”

One Thing at a Time by Ken Blanchard

I really like my friend B.J. Gallagher’s little book called Staying the Course. B.J. says, “Our journey in life is about progress, not perfection.” (Boy, isn’t that true.) “It’s not about doing one thing 100 percent better; it’s about doing a number of things 1 percent better each day. Progress is evolutionary, not revolutionary. Most days, we measure our progress in inches, not miles.” (That’s feedback; that’s the breakfast of champions!) “What matters most is showing up for your life, whether you feel like it or not. Ask yourself, ‘What two or three things can I do today that would move me forward?’ ” (That’s a very good question—what could you do?) “You’d be amazed at how much distance you could cover by taking it in increments. The little things add up. The inches turn to miles, and we string together our efforts like so many pearls. Before long, look what you have—a whole strand. Ahhh, beautiful!” So, what can you do today to keep going? To keep making a difference for your customers and for each other? Remember, things are about progress. One thing at a time. One small step can change your life. So take that step today. Source: HowWeLead.org, a blog by Ken Blanchard

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Starting to Make a New Ending I got a wonderful quote in the mail the other day from Paul Kreider, who has been with The Hershey Company for 30 years: “Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anybody can start today and make a new ending.” That’s really interesting, you know. You can’t redo the past, but, starting today, you can say, “What am I going to do differently today to get a different ending at the end of this week, the end of the year, the end of my life?” I just love that quote. So today’s the beginning of the rest of your life. How are you going to get a new ending for what you’re doing now? Source: HowWeLead.org

empowering their team produces the best results. They understand that getting their team fully engaged in the task at hand is far more important than being a visible boss who can whip a team into shape. That’s because quality leadership is not based on generating fear, a power differential or rules dictated from above; the best leaders build an atmosphere of trust and caring, albeit largely in the professional sense. Based on the author’s experiences and examples of the best leaders, this book gives an insight to improve upon one’s own leadership abilities and in serving others above serving yourself. SfH

Ken Blanchard is the co-author of many New York Times Best-Sellers, including The One Minute Manager and The One Minute Entrepreneur. He serves as chairman and chief spiritual ofﬁcer of the Ken Blanchard Companies.

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Rendezvous

Destination: Cancún Population: 450,000 Country: Mexico Currency: Peso

Cancún

Lush beaches and activities galore make Cancún a resort of many returns.

Ofﬁcial Language: Spanish Festivals: Cinco De Mayo

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by K. Shelby Skrhak

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Take an in-depth tour of Mayan culture in Chichén Itzá, where the largest archaeological remnants of the Mayan civilization are found.

There may not be a more ideal vacation spot for beach-loving, adventure-seeking, sports-minded, relic-touring, dolphin-hugging tourists than Cancún. Those who wish to take it all in with a single vacation had best plan on staying awhile. Like all gorgeous ocean resorts, Cancún offers all the beauty and relaxing environments nature can provide—and then it offers more.

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Rendezvous

Cancún by Land Situated on the Yucatán Peninsula, Cancún provides lush jungles to explore. You can rent a buggy and drive through the vegetation, charter a ﬂight over the treetops or, if you’re game, drive your own sport boat through the mangroves. If jungles make you a little uneasy, investigate ancient Mayan ruins instead.

Take an in-depth tour of Mayan culture in Chichén It z á , where t he la rge st archaeological remnants of the Mayan civilization are found. For those seeking a tamer adventure, incredible shopping opportunities abound. You’ll be enticed by the sights, sounds and smells of classy boutiques and open-air marketplaces. Cuban cigars

Shopping in Cancún As one of the world’s premier tourist destinations, Cancún has shopping as impressive as one would imagine. You will find everything from ultra-chic designer stores and famous brand names to flea markets and souvenir shops selling Mexican local handcrafts. Cancún shopping is duty-free, so you can find some real bargains on cosmetics and fine jewelry. La Isla Shopping Village La Isla Shopping Village is a glittering, ultra-trendy shoppers’ paradise on the banks of the Nichupte Lagoon in the Hotel Zone Cancún. You will find more than 150 shops here, all under a giant canopy with a series of canals and small bridges designed to create a Venetian look. There is an amazing aquarium here, as well as fabulous restaurants and cinemas showing movies in English and Spanish. Kukulcan Plaza & Luxury Avenue Kukulcan Plaza & Luxury Avenue are adjacent to each other in the Hotel Zone. Between them, they boast more than 250 shops and boutiques in exclusive and luxurious surroundings, including world-famous brands such as Louis Vuitton and Cartier. There are many specialty restaurants, bars and cafes, and even a bowling alley if the mood strikes. Plaza Caracol Plaza Caracol is situated just north of the Cancún Convention Center. There are more than 200 shops and boutiques where you will find everything from Ralph Lauren and Sunglass Island to chic perfumeries, such as Ultrafemme, to souvenir and silver jewelry stores. There is also a great choice of restaurants and cafes if you need to take a rest from shopping in Cancún. Plaza Las Americas Plaza Las Americas is found in downtown Cancún. There are three large department stores as well as more than 50 other stores, including fashion shops, bookstores, sportswear and curios. Market 28 Also known as the Mercado 28, this is a huge flea market situated in the heart of downtown Cancún. It is a fun place to buy your souvenirs, Mexican handcrafts and silver jewelry at half the price of the Hotel Zone. Next door, you will find Plaza Bonita, built to resemble a small Mexican village with colorful architecture and shops selling good-quality Mexican handcrafts and pieces of art.

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of t heir ma ster piece golf courses in Cancún a nd t he R iviera M aya , offering some of the most competitive golf courses in t h e world . C a nc ú n golf course designs have come from some of the game’s greatest names, including Jack Nicklaus, Robert Trent Jones Jr., Robert Von Hagge, Isao Aoki, Greg Norman and P.B. D ye. New courses now under construction feature designs by Tom Weiskopf, Tom Fazio and Nick Price. There’s also miniature golf for children of all ages.

can even be legally purchased in Cancún; just be sure to smoke them outside the United States. Local eateries cater to every whim, from basic street vendors and taco stands to elegant waterfront restaurants and dinner cruises. And if you’re reluctant to call it a day when the sun goes down, Cancún’s nightlife awaits with an equal variety of choices. Whether you choose an intimate drink with friends in a swank setting or venture out to a get-down-and-crazy night in one of the discos, the experience is one you’ll remember for a lifetime.

Cancún by Sport Ca ncún ha s 14 miles of white-sand beach ideal for windsurfing and parasailing. While in Cancún, why not take advantage of deep-sea fishing for marlin or bluefin tuna in the Caribbean? Cancún is a particularly rich fishing area and has many inlets and lagoons that feed the waters. Ever heard of a roosterfish? Here’s your chance to catch this prized fish. And diehard golfers needn’t despair. Magical scenery and great weather have attracted world-renowned golf course de sig n er s to cre ate some

Cancún by Sea Aquatic adventures abound in Cancún, which boasts the second-largest reef in t he world — t he Great Mesoamerican Reef. Snorkel in waters famous for amazing clarity and be aut if ul reefs. Scuba divers can choose from a number of diving companies that will rent all the gear you need and take you to the best diving locations. And calm tides off the coast provide the perfect setting for parasailing or riding your Jet Ski. For those searching for water activities suitable for the entire family, there’s a water park, complete with rivers, slides and a wave-making machine, for the delight of all in nearby Punta Nizuc. If one of your dreams is to swim with dolphins, Cancún is the place for it. Participate in a short information session where you’ll learn how to interact with this much-beloved mammal. Then you can frolic with dolphins, and even give them a peck and a hug. And when you’re exhausted from all your excursions and adventures, take time to relax on the beach and sip a cool beverage. Let the beauty of the turquoise water, the calming rhythm of the surf’s ebb and ﬂow, and the warm breezes waft your cares away. SfH VOLUME 5 ISSUE 8 SFH | 127

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CLOSING

POINT

What kind of lifestyle do you want?

XanGo Founders

Joe Morton

There are too many lifestyles out there that just don’t do justice to the term. Either it’s all style, with no real life, or it has signs of life, but no sense of style. The first lesson that XanGo teaches its distributors is that life and style are not mutually exclusive. Life is not meant to be a checklist of things we don’t want to do. And style is not just a superfluous fancy for those who can afford it. Life is a time to learn, to know and to love. Style is a signature, an ingredient in enjoyment, and something that brings personal satisfaction. XanGo offers a proprietary blend of the two. We think you should live for Monday, as well as Friday. Now, XanGo distributors are the hardest-working entrepreneurs you’ll meet, but for some reason, Thursday morning justifies as much celebration as Saturday night. It might be that our distributors love what they do. It might be that

Aaron Garrity

Gary Hollister

Gordon Morton

Discover the lifestyle that is possible for you with XanGo’s categorycreating products and thriving business opportunity. XanGo products put a bounce in their step. Or it might have something to Kent Wood do with having the best boss in town—themselves. That’s right. With the entrepreneurial freedom to take control and deﬁne the future, you make the rules, you call the shots, you take the credit. Discover the lifestyle that is possible for you with XanGo’s category-creating products and thriving business opportunity.

Bryan Davis

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