10,000 Diamonds!

Ten Thousand Diamonds

A big part of my job is to work with our Franchise Owners all over the world in order to educate them, to motivate them,  and to build their belief in their own talents, dreams, and abilities—and in Unicity as the map they can use to reach their dreams. That’s a big part of your job too, by the way.

Sometimes I’ve done this with just one person in the room or on the phone, and sometimes with tens of thousands. But one of my favorite times was at the close of the 2010 Unicity Global Convention in Bangkok, Thailand earlier this year. 

Close to thirty thousand attendees had just finished watching a spectacular production that honored thousands of Franchise Owners who advanced in rank during the year—and honored the leaders who’ve made an undeniable difference in improving the lives of others all over the world. Messages delivered were translated in over twenty different languages!

Then it was my turn to talk. Time was short. I had no desire to steal the limelight from our leaders. I wanted to leave with them a vision, an idea, a story that they could take home and share with others.

I’ve been asked on numerous occasions to share copies of what I said—and honestly, it wasn’t really ever written down. I knew at that point in time my job was to open up my heart, to open up my soul and let others see what I see for Unicity.

Recently we’ve had those remarks transcribed. I want to share with you today what I shared that day:

“There are so many people who need to feel what we’re feeling right now.

Millions of people are living below their potential—scraping out a bare existence because they have no one to lead them.

When we come together and we see people achieving their dreams, it builds within us both the desire and the confidence that we can also achieve our dreams.

What you’ve seen here over the last few days and what you’ve heard here is important, but it’s not as important as what you felt here. What you felt here will stay with you forever if you will nourish it and protect it, and most of all, share it.

Share your dreams. Believe in them. Share your passions. And most of all, share your love for people everywhere. Because we are Unicity—one family—brothers and sisters in search of a better life. Let’s not stop trying to share our opportunity with other people.

Someday your life will be over. Someday you’ll be at the very door of death—and I know what that looks like. When you’re at the very door of death you won’t be thinking about money, you won’t be thinking about supercars, or even Patek Philippes.

You’ll be thinking about how many people you have helped to be better and happier.

That will be your legacy. It will be your final thought—so I pray that the number is a big number.

That as you think those final thoughts, you’ll have thousands and thousands of faces that will go across your mind; that you will think of, and be grateful for.

I’m grateful. I’m grateful for all of you. You who lead, who paid the price to win—and I know it wasn’t easy, but you have become an inspiration to thousands and tens of thousands of people.

We have leaders here from all over the world, and they have seen it, and now they can feel it.

About eight months ago, Khun Joe, Khun On, and I met for a short visit in Hong Kong. Khun Joe asked me, ‘Why do you go to Japan so much?’

I said, ‘Because we’re working hard to build the business in Japan.’

He then said something that has changed my life forever. He said, ‘If you come to Thailand every month, we’ll build a fire so big they’ll be able to see it in Japan!’

So Japan, can you see it?

Europe, can you see it? Philippines, can you see it? Korea can you see it? North America, can you see it?

Are we going to stop here? No! No stopping! We’re going to build a fire so big that they see it all over the world and they can warm their hearts by the fire, and they can feel confident because of it.

We are going to be the biggest—the biggest direct marketing company in the world!

Nothing can stop us now. Nothing! But, we need you to be up here (on the stage). We need you to rise to a higher level of leadership excellence.

A hundred diamonds is not enough!

A thousand diamonds is not enough!

We need ten thousand diamonds!

That’s the vision—ten thousand diamonds!

Do you believe? Do YOU believe? We’re going to do it!

Don’t forget to share the feeling. Take it home with you and share it, and bring them back home—bring them back to one family. Unicity!”

ALL the best,

Stewart

Welcome to a New Year!

How exciting to be at the beginning of a new year—twelve new unused months lie ahead. A new year where anything can happen and everything is possible!

The beginning of a new year has always been an important time for me. I try to do an evaluation of the past year's performance in all aspects of my life. This can be a sobering experience as I often come up short in some of what I had hoped to do and to become. Nevertheless, it is important to reflect and to renew the determination to keep pushing forward. As we all know, it is in the “struggle” that we develop the strength and refinements that bring lasting satisfaction.

I’m certain that there are those who did not achieve all of their goals for 2009. Each of us has had years when we didn’t really get where we wanted to go—or at least as far as we wanted. A year like that can be absolutely critical to our future happiness—if we choose our response to it correctly.

If we choose to mope about or engage in self-pity or worse yet, in blaming others, we are most likely to repeat the unsatisfying year or do even worse. On the other hand, if we learn from our mistakes, build on our successes, and reignite our enthusiasm, then that disappointing year becomes the platform for our future success.

All of the really important successes that I have been blessed to enjoy have come after a disappointment. In fact, it was from the failure to achieve that I learned what I needed to know to get what I really wanted.

I believe that success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying basic fundamentals. One fundamental lesson I learned early in life is that hard work is the great equalizer.

You may not have all the talents another person enjoys but you can work hard enough to be equal to, or even greater, in achievement. In my 20s, I realized that there were a lot of people more talented than I am and

smarter than I am. I decided that if I was going Be, Do and Have, all that I had dreamed, I would have to work harder than those more talented people.

I consider that decision to be one of the most important decisions of my life. What about you? Your gifts and talents are what they are, but your choices are yours to make every minute of every day and it is in your choices that success is determined.

An important part of my evaluation has been our progress as a company. Unicity has enjoyed another good year. We certainly had our “struggles” yet we kept our focus on our goals and built on the success of 2008. I am pleased to say that we continued the trend of increasing success in each of our business metrics. I know that many of you also had strong growth in your respective businesses. Some of you have set records for yourself and a few have set records in the company. I applaud your success and hope that you will drive forward and build on that success in 2010.

This year, I continued visiting our global markets as often as possible—traveling more than 225,000 miles in airplanes. I crossed the Pacific Ocean 20 times and the Atlantic 8 times. Occasionally I’m asked, in the age of email, instant messaging, video conferencing, and VOIP why do I travel at all? Why don’t I let technology do the work? Does personally being there really matter? Aren’t I running myself ragged?

I confess that there are occasions when those technologies come in handy. And there are times when being away from home is downright painful. But I can tell you this: personally being there matters. It’s important to me to sit knee-to-knee and eye-to-eye with a

leader, a government official, or a prospect. It’s important to me that they can sense my love and commitment to making life better. Traveling two days for a two-hour meeting on the surface may not seem efficient, but in the right situation, it is very effective.

As a company, our passion, our unique ability, and how we create significant value in this world is that we build people. I have learned that building people happens best one person at a time and usually face to face.



Certainly, we improve health by offering state-of-the-art nutritional products. In addition, our Make Life Better Foundation has raised and donated millions of dollars to charities.

However, another company may be able to match our service projects and charitable contributions, in fact, other companies may try to imitate our products; but they will never be able to match our passion and our matchless, one-of-a-kind capacity to build new distributors into thriving, prosperous Franchise Owners.

We offer people the tools, training, support, and encouragement they need to prosper—and they can’t get this anywhere else. Building people is about showing them how to create a growing income, how to build a business that gives them control of their life and allowing more time to spend on the things that are most important. Building people is about giving them choices, power, motivation, education, and helping them see the possibilities.

Something magical happens when people start to grow into their potential.

We teach people how to teach people and how to live better. In short: we teach people how to be leaders. Building leaders always requires getting

knee-to-knee and eye-to-eye. It requires building and sustaining value driven relationships. Dag Hammarskjold, past Secretary-General of the United Nations, said, “It is more noble to give yourself completely to one individual than to labor diligently for the salvation of the masses.” Just imagine the growth of Unicity if next year every single Franchise Owner worldwide taught just one other person how to be an effective and self-reliant leader!

Leadership is about vision and imagination and stretching for greater heights. It’s about affirmation and encouragement. It’s about teaching and correcting. It’s about good listening and good coaching. It’s about planning with a purpose and working hard to turn good plans into good results. It’s about changing lives for the better.

When you become a more effective leader—with your Franchise Organization, or at home, at church, in the community and elsewhere—your life changes for the better, too.

Let us make 2010 a personal call to leadership. Becoming and creating leaders should be our highest priority, our greatest strength, our most significant contribution, and our solemn promise.


All the best,


Stewart Hughes
CEO
Unicity International

Homeward Bound

Dear friends,

My very brief visit to the Maldives was great. There were 300 Unicity leaders at the resort and when I arrived I saw a sea of orange. All of our people were wearing orange shirts or orange swimming suits or orange hats or even orange flip flops. Unicity was 85% of the guest count at Club Med Kani and it felt good to me to see all that Reviv orange! I am not sure how it felt to the other 15% hopefully they got revived.

We conducted a special Presidential Club training with the 25+ club members who were in attendance and then a skills training for all 300 followed by a Q&A. After a quick bite to eat it was time to catch the speed boat back to the airport. When I arrived in the late morning I took this same boat out to the Club Med island and distinctly remember thinking that I was riding in the equivalent of a Mexico City taxi only on water. It was madhouse with boats careening every which direction. Well, the return trip at night was just the same without the benefit of vision. It was exhilarating to say the least. I was tired and sleepy before I got on the boat but wide awake when I got off 45 minutes later.

I am now in Singapore on the 2nd of my two eight hour layovers in the last 38 hours. (Note to Curt: I am really beginning to see the value of a corporate jet.) All joking aside, I am so pleased to have been able to show my respect for these wonderful leaders who, in many cases, have broken out of poverty and other very difficult circumstances and have chosen to be winners. Their examples will inspire many more to do the same. This is the very definition of leadership: to help others to reach their own potential. Thailand is setting the pace in leadership!

All the best,
Stewart