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| ViSalus Sciences Founders |
These days, life moves at a breakneck pace. To be truly successful, businesses must not only keep up with the changes, but also stay one step ahead of the trends—and even effect change around them—for others to follow. ViSalus Sciences is one of those companies.
This up-and-coming wellness company poses a triple threat. In addition to having scientifically backed products that are changing people’s lives, they also have youthful leadership determined to revolutionize their industry, and they’ve created the technology to make it happen.
In every way, 4-year-old ViSalus represents the face of a new generation of network marketers. “We didn’t create our company based on where the industry has been,” says Founder and Chief Marketing Officer Blake Mallen. “We built ViSalus based on where network marketing is going.” And, in fact, ViSalus may have a role in shaping the future of the industry.
Let’s face it, we are plugged in, linked up and tethered to technology. Few people these days go anywhere without their cell phones or PDAs—checking voice mail, texting or sending e-mail to find out what’s going on from one minute to the next. And it’s not just for business, either. We love to stay entertained and connected with our friends, family and others, and we’re using social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace and Twitter to do it.
The numbers are staggering—tens of millions of unique visitors every month on each site. To date, more than a third of all adult Internet users in America have a profile on at least one social networking site. That number has more than quadrupled in less than five years.
In today’s unstable economy, people are hurting financially. What was once a desire to improve a lifestyle by making a few extra hundred dollars a month has, in many cases, now become a need to survive. Wouldn’t it be great if the two worlds could unite? Social networking meets network marketing to create an endless supply of targeted prospects for a good or service. It would be a marketer’s dream to tap into that potential and make it a reality.
“Few things in history have ever caught on so quickly on such a grand scale,” says Founder and Chief Sales Officer Nick Sarnicola. “People are ready for a fresh approach.” To capitalize on this wildly popular trend and put their own stamp on it, ViSalus invested
$10 million to develop Vi-Net. It’s a private social networking platform exclusively for ViSalus distributors that enables them to stay virally connected with other distributors around the world with the click of a button. Through Vi-Net, the company has fostered an online community focused on a single mission. “Vi-Net has become a powerful business-building and retention tool for us,” Mallen says. “And it has been responsible for a shift that has propelled ViSalus into serious motion.”
To discover why ViSalus is at the forefront of the social networking trend, one must look no further than the company’s three founders, ranging in age from 28 to 32. Some could see their youth as a disadvantage, but not these guys. After all, would an older leader have been as attuned to the significance of the hottest technology and moved to make the most out of it? “Our field appreciates the young energy we bring to the table,” Mallen says. “We’re taking this company into the next generation. Everything we do is based on ‘new school’ thinking.”
Though they are young, they each have more than a decade of experience as entrepreneurial leaders. At about the time many of their peers were deciding which parties to attend, these young men were busy working their way to the top of their respective businesses.
Founders Mallen and Sarnicola both experienced success in the network marketing industry. They woke up one day to learn that the company they worked for had gone under. Although they really didn’t need to keep working, they were concerned about the thousands of people in their downlines, so they began a thorough search for something new.
That’s when they met Michael D. Seidman, M.D. One of the most respected surgeons in the country, Dr. Seidman has spent more than two decades researching and developing cellular technology in an effort to create effective wellness products. Dr. Seidman’s reputation and his dedication to
excellence cemented the pair’s desire to bring his products to market. Not long afterward, they met Ryan Blair.
An entrepreneur from the age of 18, Founder and Chief Executive Officer Ryan Blair always had a great respect for the direct selling business model. While his company was a traditional one, he was fascinated by the entrepreneurial spirit that drives the direct selling industry and the focus on education to enhance individual success. “Mentorship is the most important aspect of entrepreneurialism,” Blair says. “In direct sales, the better the teacher, the more successful that person and their students—because the teachers are compensated by the productivity of their students. And everybody wins.”
Growing up, Blair had his share of hardships to overcome, and today he reaches out to help others just as someone helped him. “I’m a product of a broken family caught up in addiction and drugs,” Blair says. “My mom worried about me as a teenager, because I was headed down the wrong road. I dropped out of high school and had no direction or aspirations in life. She introduced me to a multimillionaire who took me under his wing and became my mentor. I realized that if this extremely successful person could believe in my ability to achieve greatness, then who am I to not believe in myself?” Because of this intervention, Blair went back to school, attended a prestigious university and became a thriving entrepreneur in his own right.
After Blair sold his second startup company, Sky Pipeline, he, too, was looking for something else. While taking a much-needed break to rest and regain his health, he devoted his time to charity and projects such as Junior Achievement, which teaches young people about financial literacy. “As a teenager, I made a promise to God that if I was able to overcome my circumstances, I would one day pay it forward somehow and help others like my mentor helped me.”
After a time, Blair met his co-founders, and together they embarked on a mission to share better health and prosperity with people around the world. “I was looking for something fulfilling,” Blair says. “I’ve always been passionate about education and health and wellness. ViSalus provides me with the vehicle to help people with both.”
With a relationship more like brothers than business partners, each of the founders is effective in different ways. “It’s somewhat unusual for a direct selling company to have three founders,” Mallen says. “Having that dynamic creates accountability. It’s a huge benefit to our distributors, because the fate of the company rests on the shoulders of three people working together for a common goal instead of just one person—and we take that responsibility seriously.”
In a fortuitous turn of events, Blair’s main investors for his previous venture had made their money in direct selling. When they learned about ViSalus, the investors were interested. As a result, Blyth Inc., a $1.2 billion leader with nearly 30 years of experience in the network marketing industry, gave ViSalus the muscle it needed to become a major player in the wellness arena. “Because we have this strategic partnership with Blyth Inc., we’ve got a ground-floor opportunity with billion-dollar security,” Mallen says. “It’s the best of both worlds.”
Although they are on the leading edge of technology, ViSalus is first and foremost a wellness company, and it shows in the very name. ViSalus is derived from Latin: Vi from the Latin word for life, and Salus means health and prosperity. And it’s not just lip service, either. The ViSalus leaders take great care to ensure they’re providing the ultimate in opportunity for their distributors.
“Our goal is to be a bridge for people,” Mallen says. “We want to take people from where they’ve been to where they want to be.” Whether it’s help with a better life, health or prosperity, that destination is dependent solely on the individual. And for some it could mean a combination of all three.
The level of commitment the founders have to the success of their distributors in the field shows most in their willingness to go the extra mile—literally. Blair, Mallen and Sarnicola are extremely passionate about working with their members to help them grow their businesses. And because they’re young and single, each one is willing to spend a majority of their time on the road, crisscrossing the country to support, educate and train their teams to succeed. “We will outwork our distributors to prove to them our dedication,” Sarnicola says. “We will go from 10:00 a.m. to midnight with them if that’s what it takes.”
ViSalus offers products for weight management, nutrition and optimal performance. And every day the testimonials come pouring in about the life-changing results. “We are a science-first company,” Sarnicola says. “We didn’t have the technology for the first three and a half years of doing business. We only had the science and the products to drive our success. We’re passionate about our products because they’re truly effective at helping people live happier, healthier lives.”
Take away the top-notch technology and the life-changing products, and at the heart of it all, the ViSalus founders are servant-driven leaders through and through. “We are highly competitive and aggressive, but we’re not willing to sacrifice our integrity to win,” Sarnicola says. “We hate to lose more than we love to win, and that shouldn’t be confused with weakness. It may be a slower process for us to find the good people out there willing to put in the hard work to succeed the right way, but they’re out there, and we will find them. And that’s what’s going to make this company successful over the long haul.”
Above all else, this is a group of people determined to do the right things. “The world works for people with the right intentions,” Mallen says. “We believe that if you do things for the right reasons and you have a passion and a belief in people, you will succeed.”
The saying among the corporate team is “Don’t be average!” and this company is far from it. “Average is the enemy of excellence,” Sarnicola says. “Whether it’s our products, our training programs or even our compensation plan, we strive to be different and to be better than the rest.”
Truly taken to heart, the mantra governs everything the ViSalus team does. “Entrepreneurship changed my life,” Blair says. “And through ViSalus, I want to share with people how they can work to make a positive difference in their own lives and the lives of others. That’s what inspires me every day."
