TEAM: Mona Vie - The Beginning of Making the Vision a Reality

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Mona-Vie Website

Mona Vie - The Beginning of Making the Vision a Reality
by Orrin Woodward on Fri 15 Feb 2008 10:12 PM EST

Here is the long awaited announcement from Chris and Terri and Laurie and I. Thank you to Chris Brady for his incredible servant leadership in writing the final article! This is the first step on our journey to our destiny! God Bless, Orrin Woodward

A Long Term Vision

Here is a bit of a vision for where we think the industry can, should, and must go! This won’t all happen tomorrow, but it is ripe for the picking, and we plan on doing it, when the timing is right!

The Hedgehog Concept of the Future

Author Jim Collins writes about what he calls a “Hedgehog Concept” in his book Good to Great. He represents this as the core competency at which an organization can become the best in the world. He said it would be the intersection of several other competencies. Using Collin’s model, let’s look at what could and should be done in this industry.

Collins asks three questions:

What are you deeply passionate about?
What can you be the best in the world at?
What drives your economic engine?

Let’s dig into these questions.

Community Building

Community building has been our passion; building communities in order to make a difference in people’s lives. A business to us is about people, and it’s the lives of people we want to affect in a positive way. We want to figure out how to serve the most people possible to help them prosper and get what they want. To do this, we’ve had to think systematically. How could we make success more systematic for everyone? Michael Gerber in the book E-Myth wrote, “It is literally impossible to produce a consistent result in a business that depends upon extraordinary people. Develop a system that leverages your ordinary people to the point where they can produce extraordinary results over and over again.” That’s exactly what our community building philosophy is all about. Helping people earn, change, and grow internally is the key to helping them become effective externally.

Field Profit Only

It doesn’t get any better than a company that keeps NO profit for itself and instead puts it ALL back out to the field. Don’t get us wrong. There are many companies that have very fair compensation programs and share liberally with their business owners in the field. But the best, craziest scenario for the future would be to go all the way to the extreme and share ALL the profits with the field. Perhaps the company itself would simply be owned by the field. We’re not sure; it’s never been done. We call the concept “Field Profit Only,” because the field would be the only place where there would be Profits. Others have called this “Open Source,” drawing a parallel to free-access software that is better served by everybody having access and control of it rather than a company at the top. Whatever the name for it, the concept is one that should be attempted. As Sir Edmund Hillary said in response to the question of why he climbed Mount Everest: “Because it was there.”

Always Competitive Prices

A philosophy of competitive pricing means that an organization will be willing to make up in volume what they lack in margin. Instead of small sales with high margins, the model would require large sales with small margins, akin to the Wal-Mart philosophy. This, of course, would be enabled by the Field Profit Only component described above, where all “middle men” have been eliminated and there is more room to push prices lower. Think about it: prices are lowered because everyone wants a successful business and that has to be driven by customer sales. Since everyone is sharing in the profits, anyway, it makes total sense. The more competitive the pricing, the easier it is for the average business owner to make retail sales. The easier the retail sales: the higher the volume. The higher the volume: the higher the rewards to the business owners.
Continual market analysis could be used to keep product pricing on track and in line with market forces. This would eliminate “competitive drift,” where a product that was once competitive gets left behind by price decreases in the market.

We have talked about three possible core competencies. Intersecting these three areas forms a new Venn diagram, as shown below:

Look at where the three competencies overlap. That area is what Collins calls the Hedgehog concept. He writes, “A hedgehog concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. The distinction is absolutely crucial.”
In this case, where we believe the industry can, should, and must go is to a point where these three core competencies intersect and provide people with their absolute best shot at the life they’ve always wanted. As Victor Hugo said, “An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come.”
A Virtuous Cycle: The way this all works together is called a Virtuous Cycle. See the diagram below:

A virtuous cycle is basically a situation where things are done right, in the right way, for the right reasons, and because of this the cycle rotates faster and faster. When Sam Walton was running the Wal-Mart virtuous cycle, his limiting factor was multi-million dollar stores that had to be built. The only limit is one’s vision for a brighter future. Sight is seeing with the eyes, vision is seeing with the mind.


First Things First

Obviously, the question of what to do next in our lives has been a big one! The biggest visions still require a first step. Neither of us wanted to take any steps without careful consideration and considerable research. Our chief goal was to make sure our energies went into an activity that would be rewarding, fun, significant in the lives of others, and glorifying to God. We have been blessed, and it is heavy upon our hearts to use the gifts we have been given to do something worthwhile and positive.

Several possibilities were considered. Some involved creating something brand new, from scratch, and launching it when we were able. However, circumstances being what they are, and considering timing and quality of implementation, allegorically this would be a 100% opportunity with a 50% chance. Obviously, it would be much better to take an initial step with 100% chance as a first step in the direction of the overall vision. In turn, this would be a step upon which to build.

This line of thinking led to the idea of getting involved with something already existing. Orrin Woodward’s benchmarking experience came in handy, as we learned to consider the leadership, focus, timing, product, pay plan, and competitiveness of a wide variety of ventures. We wanted something duplicate-able, built on “b-type” business strategies, and with a heavy focus on people and sharing. We also wanted to take advantage of some of today’s biggest trends, such as the wellness industry.

Our Choice

After considering many, many fields, opportunities, and companies, we finally selected, as our choice for future personal involvement, a company called Mona Vie, (www.monavie.com) which satisfies all the areas we were interested in. We have been very impressed with the company’s founders and leadership, and many other aspects of Mona Vie, including:

their Binary pay plan is easy to understand, teach, duplicate
their Binary pay plan is fair, rewards teamwork and “depth,” and leaves no one behind
the levels of STAR and STARMAKER are extremely duplicate-able and easy to teach for everyone
the compensation plan, including the 8 ways to make money, is the most exciting we could find in the industry
50% of the product revenue is paid back out to the distributors in the field. Not only is this one of the highest totals we could find in the entire industry, but it is an ACTUAL 50%, not a THEORETICAL 50%, this is because:
there is no BREAKAGE in the pay plan (Breakage is where there is earned bonuses that don’t make it into the paychecks of the distributors, this can happen any number of ways, and most MLM pay plans have multiple layers of breakage that benefit the parent company). In part, this is made possible because:
Any left over volume that doesn’t get figured into a distributor’s bonus in the current pay week, automatically gets applied to the next week.
people are experiencing financial success with this pay plan
the product is exactly in line with the wellness trends of today
the product creates excitement of its own in the marketplace and has a tremendous following of individuals who have experienced benefits
the product is being used successfully to contact others about the business itself
the product tastes absolutely great!
harvesting of the product protects trees in the rain forest and preserves the environment
the marketing and integration of Mona Vie as a company are world class
there is a plethora of brochures, magazines, and other such aids provided by the company that do a wonderful job of explaining their product and opportunity
Mona Vie’s website is top notch and specifically designed to help distributors sell its product, including a free “personalized” website interface to be used with customers.
there has been a lot of press about the product from famous business figures to professional, championship level professional athletes
their policies and procedures are fair, honest, and understandable
when sharing the business opportunity, Mona Vie mandates the display of their Income Disclosure Statement. This statement not only shows average incomes, but it shows them clearly at each level in their business. Further, it shows highs and lows at each level. And finally, it shows exactly how many individuals are currently qualified at each of those income levels. This amount of clarity and disclosure, as well as the success that it represents, is extremely exciting.
their pay plan pays its distributors WEEKLY. We love this idea and think the average distributor can benefit a lot from an idea like this.
weekly payment is credited to a ready-to-use Mastercard.
qualification periods are either weekly or, for larger levels, monthly. This is nice for anyone setting goals to be able to reach them in a short, reasonable time-frame.
there are incentive trips, lease luxury cars, jet travel time, diamond rings and pendants, money toward motor coaches, and conferences for achievers
the product volume (PV) is easily calculated (100PV represents one case of four bottles) which makes the entire pay plan extremely easy to understand and teach
there are bulk order discounts which allow for increased profits on retail sales
there is an excellent Preferred Customer program
the business can be built in many countries without any complicated procedures. In essence, volume is volume, no matter which participant country it is generated in
the company founded and supports the MORE project dedicated to helping the orphaned children of South America.

Because of these reasons and many more, we have decided to become involved in the Mona Vie business, once we are free to do so. (A court injunction was recently extended 45 days which, to the best we can interpret, precludes our taking such a step at this time, and obviously, we disagree with this extension and our lawyers are filing paperwork to that effect).

We are extremely excited about our upcoming participation in the Mona Vie business. We can’t wait to build Mona Vie businesses that span the continent, and beyond. Our goal is to impress the excellent leaders at Mona Vie with our efforts, results, and contribution to their vision. And at the same time, we are keeping our eyes on a vision of the future that just might get a little crazy!

Update: I will give an analogy for all the people desiring to know the method to our madness. When Winston Churchill was in a battle with Nazi Germany, he did not bother to build new cities. One, it takes capital that was needed in the war effort. Two, why bother building something that will be blown apart by the enemy. Winston knew the logical thing to do was to feed the troops and defeat the enemy. When this is done, there will be plenty of time to build the dream city. Thanks, Orrin