New Perspectives

Fulfilling One's Destiny
through Direct Selling
by Sam Caster

There's a saying that if you remember the '60s, you weren't there. I must not have been there because my memory of those years is vivid.

In 1967, I was about to start my senior year in high school. Like most kids my age, I was acutely aware of the political unrest in the country, but other than facing next year's draft, these issues seemed a million miles away.

America was involved in an escalating war in Vietnam, racial unrest had exploded into mass riots in major cities, the Cold War was in full swing, and major college campuses were becoming arenas for social unrest. My biggest concerns, however, were whether I would start on the basketball team that year and whether I would recover from the breakup of a summer romance. I had a total disconnect to the challenges facing the world because my world was only about five miles in circumference.

In the first month of my senior year, a newly formed group called Up with People made its inaugural visit to my city. I went with a group of friends to the show because it served as a good reason to go out on Saturday night, plus the night out had the approval of my parents. I was stunned at what I saw at the concert.

As one of the spokespersons in the show proclaimed, "This is not just another musical; this is a demonstration proclaiming the views of a group of students from 26 countries who are determined to assume the responsibilities for facing the challenges our generation will inherit." The 18-year-old black student from inner-city Baltimore named Joe Green-Bishop went on to state that "the issue facing our generation was not one of Black Power vs. White Power, but whether we, as a generation, had the guts to get beyond our differences to find real solutions to such global challenges as hunger, disease and war."

This was a group of students just as passionate as those I'd seen on television, but this group was delivering a message of hope. Their music was inspiring and their cause was determined.

At the end of the show they announced that they wanted to meet with any young adults who wanted to find out how they could participate in Up with People. I went forward. I couldn't help myself. Their purpose was magnetic, and in less than two weeks and after multiple interviews, I was invited to join the traveling cast immediately. I thank God that my parents saw the potential benefit the experience would make to my life and allowed me to leave home, finish high school on the road, and travel for three and a half years to all parts of the world. The goal of Up with People was to train future leaders by providing them with a global perspective and empowering them with a can-do attitude. Their show was the expression of their purpose.

My three and a half years gave me life skills beyond my wildest expectations. We were invited by the mayor of New York to do street shows in Harlem in the summer of 1968 in a successful attempt to cool down a community about to boil over. We were taken into the schools to create open dialog with students about how to positively initiate change. We performed on college campuses all over Europe and had public debate with student leaders who saw violence as the most effective way to transform society. We performed for the most severely wounded troops in Vietnam, and were invited by heads of state into Africa, South America and Asia. In the midst of chaos, we represented a voice of hope.

In 1970 I returned home to attend college. I took with me the burning desire to make a difference, to take everything I had learned and experienced and parlay it into a meaningful contribution. I was shocked at how out of sync everything felt. University seemed like high school. Students didn't seem to care about much beyond their circumstances, and my professors seemed to be promoting that it was the job of government to solve social ills. No one spoke of personal responsibility; everyone spoke of victims. I became disillusioned and dropped out of school in my senior year. This didn't deter my drive for success.

I became an entrepreneur and moved from one venture to the next, but with little purpose other than financial success. In 1988 my life came crashing down. Though financially successful, my business had begun to fail and, worse, I didn't care. I felt like I had no purpose and no real passion over the next few years for anything. My wife, Linda, finally convinced me that God did, in fact, have a purpose for my life and that we should pray for that direction. I reluctantly began doing just that.

In 1990 I was invited to consult with a group of very forward-thinking healthcare professionals. They had come to the conclusion that our healthcare philosophy of managing illness was not serving their patients' needs and was, in addition, headed for economic disaster. They believed that the only hope to turn this tide was to begin incorporating scientifically valid wellness strategies into their practices. Their search had led them to the cutting edge of nutritional science in biochemical individuality; whole-food nutrients and the need for cleansing the body were among the strategies they had already incorporated. Their most recent find, however, defied conventional wisdom.

A small pharmaceutical company had discovered and stabilized what they claimed to be the immune-enhancing molecule in the aloe vera plant. It was a long-chain polysaccharide made up primarily of a sugar called mannose. This discovery was met with great skepticism in the scientific community because very few believed that a dietary sugar molecule could play a role in immune support. But at the very same time, an entirely new science called glycobiology (the prefix glyco- is derived from the Greek word for sweet) was quickly emerging.

The first peer-reviewed scientific journal in glycobiology was published in 1990. Glycobiology is the study of the biological function of a small group of sugar molecules. A group of eight sugars serve as "letters of the alphabet" for cell-to-cell communication. One of the functions of cellular "words" is to instruct the immune system to turn on or turn off. The pharmaceutical publication Capitalizing on Carbohydrates was issued in 1990 and stated that when cells become diseased, as in cancer or autoimmunity, these cell-surface "words" become altered. In late 1993 I helped found a nutritional supplement company that would focus on this new science of glycobiology.

The quality-of-life responses achieved by glyconutrients exceeded even our wildest expectations, and our direct sales model became the perfect vehicle to introduce this new science into the global market. With the passage of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, our associates could distribute legitimate scientific information to help educate their potential customers. Something else started to occur: Our employees, our associates and I began to develop a tremendous passion for making a positive impact on the lives of others.

By the late '90s, I began to realize that beyond an incredible business opportunity, this new technology could play a critical role in the quality of life for the world's most at-risk children, so my wife and I founded a 501(c)3 not-for-profit entity in 1999, and in seven short years we are now benefiting more than 20,000 children a day in more than 70 countries, and we've barely started. Our associate base has been the driving force behind this effort, connecting us with orphanage organizations all over the world and then playing the lead role in our fund-raising activities.

Today, I am fulfilling the destiny I have been called to, and my life has the purpose I was desperate to find. Last week our company was able to sponsor the return of Up with People to our community. It's been 40 years since that night in 1967, and I've come full circle. Up with Destiny. Sam Caster is the Founder, CEO, and Chairman of the Board of Mannatech Incorporated.

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