New Perspectives

Top Desk with David Lisonbee:
A Rich History of Sharing

I'm sure you've heard: The business sector is abuzz with the important role corporate citizenship plays in today's market. Referred to as "corporate responsibility" or "corporate social responsibility," executive teams are now sensitive to a fact that's fueled direct sales for more than 50 years. That is, personal values play an important role in driving consumers to the products they purchase and the companies they support.

We appreciate opportunities to leverage purchasing power in support of companies committed to doing good while conducting business. From literacy campaigns to the environment, basic health care to disaster relief, worldwide hunger, clean drinking water, domestic violence, it's difficult to walk through a mall without noticing the causes that retailers adopt. This is a relatively new trend-to dedicate expensive advertising space to the good stories about how our purchases make a difference.

In a Forbes.com article titled, Can Corporations Save the World?, Carlye Adler quotes Alan Hassenfeld, Chairman of Hasbro, as saying, "In order to make a profit in this day and age, companies are not going to exist if they don't have corporate responsibility."

Ultimately, we'll gauge corporate America's success in social responsibility by its capacity to meaningfully share in community concerns. Sharing describes the commonality between people who give and receive. Although donations of money and product play important roles in addressing the world's problems, there is a deeper significance to sharing that corporate America sometimes overlooks, a significance that attracts people to direct sales and network marketing.

What is it? Sharing made personal. The high-touch experience. Person-to-person communications. The genuine and caring relationships that people develop in everyday life.

For corporate America, a personal spin on business may appear disingenuous to customers because, by and large, the act of sharing begins and ends with a retail purchase. This isn't to suggest that the percentage of sales dedicated to worthy causes does less good, but that it's natural for us to seek out more meaningful exchanges than the acquisition of this or that widget.

Ultimately, when it comes to personal opportunities for sharing, customers and distributors in the direct sales industry have a leg up on corporate America. I defy you to find a successful company in our marketplace that doesn't incorporate the needs of others as part of its working model for success. Stories of sharing and caring are as vast and diverse in our industry as the people they serve. I look forward to reading about them every month in this magazine and other publications.

Alticor

When employees at Alticor Inc. (parent company of Access Business Group, Amway, the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel and Quixtar) began researching charitable causes to support, they were shocked to learn that 125 million children throughout the world lack access to basic education and 12 million don't live to be 5 years old.

The company decided to focus its global charitable activities on children's welfare and launched its One by One campaign. Over the course of only two years Alticor gave $14 million to children's organizations around the world, touching the lives of 4 million children. In 2005, Alticor's charitable efforts were recognized with the Direct Selling Association's Vision for Tomorrow Award.

Nu Skin Enterprises

The December 2006 issue of Success from Home magazine reported on Nu Skin's Build a Village program. The charitable campaign is supported by the Nu Skin Force for Good FoundationT and is designed to teach people in the African country of Malawi how to farm, plant and build for themselves. And through the company's Nourish the Children initiative, Nu Skin distributors have donated more than 60 million meals to feed starving children.

Avon

The September 2006 issue of Direct Selling News reported on The Avon Foundation and its mission to "improve the lives of women and their families through education and economic advancement."

The Foundation was launched in 1955 and has raised and awarded more than $450 million to help increase awareness and end breast cancer and domestic violence through its Breast Cancer Crusade and Speak Out Against Domestic Violence campaigns.

These are just three of the many examples of our industry's generosity. I appreciate this opportunity to express my personal gratitude for companies that have set such excellent philanthropic examples for us to follow. In 1998, my wife Bianca and I launched 4Life Research with the mission of improving people's lives through Science, Success and Service. In 2003, 4Life was recognized on Inc. magazine's list of the 500 fastest-growing companies as the 15th fastest-growing privately held company in the United States. As evidenced by our month-after-month growth since, we've enjoyed a degree of success. Our real satisfaction and reward, however, comes from the privilege of sharing in the lives of so many great people around the world.

"I've learned from our distributors that there's not only a need to receive," Bianca told Direct Selling News in an interview for an article about 4Life's corporate philanthropy efforts that appeared last year, "but there's also the human need to give; our success is only as good as the lives that it's changing for the better."

In 2000, 4Life began funding Nkosi Haven 4Life Farm for HIV-positive women and children. In 2001, I had the honor of traveling with 4Life distributors and family members to New York City with monetary relief for the families of firefighters from Manhattan's Engine 54 after 9/11.

Then, in 2006, 4Life distributors launched Foundation 4Life in the Dominican Republic to help provide funding to La Casa Rosada Orphanage. Established in 2001, La Casa Rosada (The Pink House) is a Catholic orphanage in the heart of Santo Domingo that provides health care, housing, education and job training for orphans afflicted with HIV. The nuns who govern the orphanage do so because they believe HIV-infected orphans represent one of the most critical social problems in the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean. Currently, La Casa Rosada is home to 50 children.

Foundation 4Life is a distributor-driven, nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the needs of communities wherever 4Life conducts business. By helping people who, for whatever reason, are incapable of helping themselves, 4Life distributors carry forward the rich history of sharing that network marketing enjoys.

In February I attended the WFDSA (World Federation of Direct Selling Associations) CEO Council Meeting in Brazil. The amazing thing about this Council is how openly competitors come together to share and problem-solve for the industry's greater good. The Council is, I think, an excellent example of the values we impart to our distributors-by helping each other, we do better for ourselves. This simple but significant axiom is expressed by how we train our leaders and business-builders to share the value of our products and our opportunity with people around the world.

In a Fortune magazine cover story, The Power of Philanthropy, (Sept. 18, 2006), Bethany McLean notes that the distinction between nonprofit work and traditional business is beginning to blur. Arguably, our ongoing success in relating commerce and philanthropy will be key to attracting future generations to direct sales and network marketing.

Traditional advertisers often refer to the "characteristics" of a product. Now, more than ever, customers look beyond product labels to the characteristics of the people and companies who sell them.

David Lisonbee, Founder and CEO of 4Life Research, is also a founder of the Brigham Young University Center for Entrepreneurship at the Marriott School of Management. Last year, he was inducted into the Russian Academy of Medical & Technical Sciences and presented the Blokhina Award for excellence in the field of immune sciences.

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