Transcript: Family Enterprise (Doug DeVos)
Family Enterprise
Doug DeVos
We're talking about vocation, about work, and about, for many people, how do you mix a ministry emphasis with a way to support that ministry? And when the ministry is you, how do you support yourself?
So let me just kind of unpack some things from my past and my history in a career in a business called Amway. I'm going to talk about some business elements here, but what I want to really kind of hit on are the reasons for the Amway business.
Very briefly, Amway is a global direct selling company. We operate around the world in over 100 countries and territories. We had sales of just under nine billion dollars last year, and we have an opportunity to impact literally millions of people who are starting a business of their own selling our products and the methods that we use. It's a direct selling method. It's a person-to-person method supported with a lot of great products and technology. But that's not the point.
The point is we've been doing it for a while. The point is that my father and his partner Jay Van Andel started this business because they believed that every person had potential for greatness. They believed that there were people around the world who wanted to have a business of their own, who wanted to chart their own course from a business perspective, but just didn't have the tools or the training or the support to be able to make that happen for themselves.
As a company, we do research around the world. We find that the idea of having a business of your own—the entrepreneurial idea—is well regarded. Well over 70% of people around the world really think that's a great thing. But then when you ask them the next question, "Well, could you see yourself doing it?" there's a big gap. It drops to below 50%. And then the number that actually do it is lower still because there are barriers in the way that hold people back—barriers of getting capital, of finding products, of having mentors and training and things of that nature.
They experienced this in the 1940s when they were together as high school students. They wanted to get in business together, and they found different ways to do it. They found challenges that held them back. So they wanted to create a business that would help others get into business. Certainly, products needed to be sold to make the business operate, but the ideas they had behind the business are what's important, and that's what I want to really dive into.
They had four what we call Founders Fundamentals—four galvanizing ideas that really were the "why" behind why they started this business. So there's a lot to unpack, but let me go through these ideas.
Number one was freedom.
Second was family.
Third was hope.
Fourth was reward.
Let's start with freedom. The idea of having, in today’s world, the economic wealth or support to achieve different things is very important. It always has been. Having a business of your own and achieving a level of economic success is the key for you to be able to make more and more decisions about where you want to spend your time and energy—your time, your talent, your treasure. Because if you have something, then you have something to share. Before you can share something, you need to have something.
Again, I'm talking in an economic sense, not in a spiritual sense, because we've all been given those gifts. In an economic sense, you need to create a level of wealth or help people create a level of wealth so that it can be shared. That's your connection to freedom.
What we found is that this idea comes across the spectrum. There are people who have no wealth, who aren't prepared for it, who have not had opportunities in their life, and they're willing to do anything. They have sweat equity. They're willing to work hard. They're willing to just put themselves out there and learn whatever they have to do to be successful.
Then we have a lot of people who've joined our business on the other side of the spectrum. They were very well educated. They had great careers and great jobs, but they felt trapped by their career or their job. They weren't able to do what they wanted to do with themselves, with their family, with their community—whatever the case may be. So the idea of freedom spans that spectrum. Everybody is interested in having greater opportunity to make a choice for themselves, to follow the purpose that God's calling them to follow, whatever it may be.
In a business sense, we don't judge that purpose. Whatever somebody wants to do, we just want to help them achieve that level of freedom. That's why we talk about it so much.
The second is family. What we've tried to do is create business enterprises that connect families and bring families together. There are too many stories in the world of careers disrupting families, of hurting families—of actually taking it from a good thing to something that tears relationships apart.
In the direct selling business, traditionally you had different types of opportunities or products that would appeal to men, and you had opportunities and products that would appeal to women. In the industry, many times the sales force would be made up of either men or women. Well, we were the business that said, “This is ridiculous.” They should be working together as a couple in many cases—not all cases, but in many cases. There should be a business that's transferable for generations.
We’ve been operating for 60 years now. We have people in the second and third generation whose parents or grandparents started with us many years ago. They are now working that business and keeping that tradition going. We wanted to be a business that brought people together and created a family atmosphere that cared about individuals.
Without going too deep into it, the way our method works—if you want to be successful, you need to help somebody else be successful. The better you are at helping somebody else be successful, the more successful you are able to become. We don't set any limits on that.
Even though it’s a big global business, we operate in many ways like small franchises, if you can imagine it that way. Some groups are literally families, but as they grow bigger, there's still that family atmosphere. There's that small business atmosphere where everybody has each other's back, where you come together and you support each other. If somebody's hurting on a personal issue outside of the business, people are there for them.
I went to school at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana—a small town. And right when I started going there, we met some Amway business owners who were in that town and developed a friendship over many years. Relatively recently, the gentleman passed away unexpectedly. Wonderful, wonderful man.
In a smaller town, you would have expected a nice funeral, but probably not one well attended. Their town wasn’t that large. But the church was packed. It was overflowing because Amway people surrounded his family in their loss. They were there for them. They wanted to follow up with them. The meals were taken care of. The needs of that family were met right there because people rallied around.
Now that happens in small communities. It happens in large communities. And it happens in our business because of that idea of family.
Well, the next idea we talked about was hope—and the fact that wherever you are, there's hope for the future. There's a plan, there's a purpose, there's a way to go forward.
Now my father and his partner grew up in the times of the great economic depression here in the United States, and they experienced what it was like to be at a place of hopelessness. There were so many people who were in that place. My father went through a similar experience. His father had lost his job, so they lost their home. They moved in with my father’s grandparents. They had a small upper room in their home that they were able to stay in. It was difficult during those times.
He remembers a point where a young man was selling magazines door to door and came to his father. My father watched his father at the door with this young man saying, “Sir, would you buy my magazine? It only costs a dime—ten cents.” And my grandfather had to look at him and say, “Son, I’d love to buy that magazine, but I don’t have a dime. I can’t help you.”
But my grandfather never experienced hopelessness. He continued, even in those troubled times, to tell my dad and to encourage his family, “It’s going to get better. Someday we’re going to get through this. Someday we’re going to move forward. Someday it’s going to be better. So let’s be encouraged about the future.”
And so wherever you are, you're not stuck. So many people have that experience of being stuck. This idea of hope is so vital for us. We wanted to make sure that at Amway, everybody would have an opportunity to have a business of their own.
In the early days, as the business was just starting and developing, there were some professionals who approached my father and Jay Van Andel. They’d say, “Well, you want to be careful about who you’re bringing into the business because the reputation of the company is important.” And so you might want to really think about who you’re talking to because you don’t want just anybody coming in. You want to segment it out. You want to find people who have experience in sales and have good presentation skills—people who can do this or that very, very well.
My dad and Jay rejected them immediately. They said, “Well, who do you want to leave out? Who’s the segment of people you want to leave out of this opportunity?” And they never accepted that.
They wanted to create an opportunity for everybody. They didn’t want the good public speakers—they wanted the bad public speakers, because a bad public speaker tells the crowd, “If they can do it, you can do it too.” That’s right. That’s the message.
And so we have so many people who—none of us are perfect—but they’re real, and they were in a place where they felt stuck, and now they’re in a place where they’re not stuck anymore. This idea of hope—from a ministry perspective, from a vocational perspective—you can get tied up economically. From a personal perspective, you can get tied up. But this idea of hope, and certainly that’s what we all rely on—the hope of the gospel—that idea applies in a vocational sense as well.
And the last one was reward. We talked about that we have a business, so we have financial incentives that are part of the business. When you sell enough product, there’s a calculation of the bonus or a commission that you receive. We have a very elaborate structure for how this works—how it works globally, how it works for millions of people that are connected together. So when you do the work necessary, it's connected to a financial reward.
But we went beyond that as well. The idea of recognition—of celebrating somebody’s achievement—was also something that was powerful and important to us. So when we talk about reward, certainly there are financial rewards that are part of what we do, but there’s also recognition that’s built into our business opportunity. It’s simply a way to celebrate the successes—big or small. Whatever it is, there’s a success. There’s a step forward.
Many times, what we find is that the personal recognition, the personal support, the personal celebrations tend to even outweigh some of the financial aspects. We’re a business, so they kind of go together. But we’ve learned how important it is for people to have relationships with other people. When you celebrate the achievement of somebody else, you don’t see it as, “Well, if somebody else achieves, then I can’t achieve.” It’s not that type of a game. Our business is a business where everyone can achieve.
That’s what we’re trying to do as a business. That’s what we believed from an economic standpoint—that everyone has a purpose, everyone has potential. And we want to reward and recognize and celebrate the achievements that people have—big and small, whatever they may be—because they’re important to that person, and we want to celebrate the person.
So that’s a quick overview of some of these elements that we think are important in our business. I can tell you those stories, and I can explain them to you or elaborate on them, but I hope they fit for you. That’s the idea here. When you’re trying to explore these elements and find a way forward for yourself economically, hopefully some of these ideas—the idea of setting your own path, having the freedom to do it; the idea of your family surrounding you and being with you, whether it’s your specific family or a community of people that support you—are important.
The idea of hope—wherever you are, you’re not stuck. Even if you’ve come from a tough place, whatever it may be, you’re not stuck. There is a future for you. God has a plan for you in your future. And there is reward. There’s celebration in the body of people that come together to be with you. And when you’re doing the right things in an economic sense, there’s reward. There’s a profit motive that comes with it. And there’s also a relationship motive.
Because when you generate profit—when you generate economic wealth—you then have something to share with others or to use to support the other work that you do, whatever that ministry may be for you.
So those are some of the ideas that we wanted to talk about today. I hope they’re helpful for you. I hope it makes sense in some way and that you can use them to further yourself, to go forward to what God has called you to do.