I’ve been to many corporate conventions in my career. Usually they are filled with numbers, statistics, reports of achievements, bonus numbers and visions for the coming times. These events are positive, uplifting rah-rah events to motivate employees into action for the profit of the company and bottom line to shareholders.
The doTERRA Dream Global Convention was not like that at all.
I already knew doTERRA worked directly with individual farmers around the world to source the oils I love in my home. I also knew about many ways doTERRA gives back to help improve lives from poverty, natural disaster, and lack of access to things like education, water and food.
What I didn’t know is how big those efforts actually are or the extend to which this service model is practiced within this company every day. All companies say they are involved in communities or charitable efforts but what I saw and heard at the doTERRA Dream Global Convention was a true game changer and made any other company’s talk of charity sound like simple lip service.
Not a Rah-Rah Cheerleader Event
At this year’s doTERRA Dream Global Convention, I learned a few things that really moved me. More than once I actually had tears come to my eyes and many people around me did as well at the things we were seeing and hearing.
Images and stories for how people in third world countries were living in shear poverty.
The treatment of women when their husbands were killed and the families left behind were evicted form their home with no money or means to support themselves.
How somewhere else a volcano wiped out an entire village destroying homes.
Or the story of a school run by nuns that was in such dire need of repair the bathrooms were rendered unusable and students slept on a bare floor in that building every day because there was nothing else for them to sleep on.
These stories seemed to never end with each having their own level of pain, suffering and despair. They were so severe we cannot even imagine them happening in our normal air conditioned, comfortable lives. These were true heart-breaking, terrible stories for how many live every day.
Nothing about these stories were rah-rah, look at how great we are doing as a company.
One of the reasons doTERRA appealed to me as a consumer and later Wellness Advocate is because they have a few programs that appeared to help people. I liked for instance, all doTERRA employees and Wellness Advocates have free access to the doTERRA Free to Give program that helps people get out of debt so they can serve others better. Then there is their Healing Hands Foundation that works with programs like OUR (Operation Underground Railroad) to prevent, rescue and help heal children victimized by sex trafficking. These are great charitable programs that spoke to me as a consumer and later as a distributor but what actually happens is so much larger than just these awesome programs.
It Goes Even Beyond That
What I didn’t realize is how much bigger of an impact doTERRA actually makes directly and globally through basic operational processes. See, the stories of hardship and struggle presented in over half the three day convention content weren’t done just to pull on heartstrings or even to even ask for donations.
It was to show what happens when we purchase doTERRA products. It showed the process of how the money from those sales is used to help people who live in these unimaginable conditions.
It demonstrated directly how seriously different doTERRA is when they speak of paying-it-forward or helping others.
Instead of showing growth and sales charts of each product and oil sold over the last year, doTERRA shows each oil’s performance results in terms of lives impacted, jobs created and communities uplifted. The profit and growth statistical reports were summarized and took 5 minutes compared to how much more focus was placed on this larger objective of serving others.
The message was if the product does not help someone else beyond just the consumer, then it isn’t worth being produced.
Co-Impacting Sourcing
The way doTERRA operates is through a process model called co-impacting sourcing. This means doTERRA contracts directly with small individual farmers and communities to grow, harvest and process the materials that produce the essential oils. There are no middle men, dealers, corporations or corporate farms involved in this process. Instead it is farmers, families and women.
Hitting Home
There was a story and video at convention about two women that both lost their husbands and had 4-6 children each to support. One of the women was pregnant at the time her husband died. These women were evicted from their homes provided by the company their late husbands worked for as a benefit. But when their husbands were killed these families were forced out immediately without any money to support themselves.
Think about trying to mourn and bury your husband and at the same time being evicted from your home with several young children and one more on the way. As a mom and wife, I am not sure at all what I would do in that moment. There was not a grace period for these women during this time.
The women were homemakers with no prior working experience. The women struggled to work in fields and any work they could find, including at times prostitution in order to feed their children. The children could not continue attending school because the mother’s could not pay the minimal school fees. These families were literally living in the streets.
How easy something like that could happen in our own lives.
A doTERRA sourcing representative found these two women and asked if they would be willing to pick pink pepper from the trees that grow everywhere in the area where they lived. He was willing to pay them double what they were making. Without hesitation, these two barefooted women were climbing these huge trees to pick all the pink pepper they could reach. The first day they carried over 20 kilos each of pink pepper to the distiller for processing!
doTERRA helped them secure funding to purchase a home and small land to farm and rebuild their lives. Today these women own a small farm and make a very good living growing, harvesting and selling pink pepper and geranium — all for doTERRA. Their children can attend school, have clothing, food and water in a secure home.
Hearing these women tell their story had tears in every eye. Hearing the doTERRA representative (2nd from right in photo below) tell what he saw and did to help these women had major ugly crying going on. Even still writing this post and talking about this story gives me pause to wipe my eyes.
Here’s a picture of both women on either side of Emily Wright, one of the founders of doTERRA along with the representative that first found these women (2nd from right) and others who became involved. They are standing on the little farm these women now own.
You can purchase essential oils from a number of companies today. You cannot however, purchase essential oils from any other company but doTERRA where they are helping people to this level in the process of selling you that essential oil. As said in the convention, co-impacting sourcing is a social responsibility.
Profit and Loss Charts
Here are a few of the slides shown at the convention for how several oils from around the world are performing at doTERRA. These are the numbers the leaders at doTERRA use to say if the company is successful or not in the past year.
Haiti – Vetiver Essential Oil
Guatemala – Cardamon Essential Oil
Somaliland – Frankincense
There are over 55 countries where doTERRA essential oils are grown and harvested in this same manner, with similar slides showing the lives impacted, jobs created and stories of families finding an improved way of life.
People Over Profit
I can tell you from the many years I have worked in corporations they all have foundations and charitable acts they perform. However, I personally, have never seen any company do it to the level of doTERRA. It’s not something just spoken about and given some attention at the holidays. It is embedded into day-to-day operational decisions and processes globally.
When I hear someone say doTERRA essentials are “too expensive” or it’s not worth having an oil come from the best plant available from around the world, I know this person doesn’t realize the magnitude of difference between doTERRA and any other essential oil company there is in the world. Honestly, now knowing how much profit goes back to the farmers who are helped through my purchase of an essential oil from doTERRA I say the price of the oil is not high enough!
How We are Linked
When I open a bottle of lavender to apply to my son before bed or put in our diffusers to help us sleep, I know there is a mom in Bulgaria able to put her children to sleep in actual beds because of our mutual relationship to doTERRA. If it costs me a couple bucks more on a bottle of lavender making that possible for that mom, I’m more than ok with that.
The actual price of the oils between doTERRA when you look at where the money for that oil is going along with the quality and purity standards doTERRA self-imposes is unquestionable.
When you buy an essential oil, where is your money going?
Is it going to a corporate farm, shareholder profit or a single mom working 5 acres to support her children?
Let me show you again, where the profits of the oils sold by doTERRA went last year.
Can you say the same of the oils you purchased?
Interested in more?
It greatly matters where your oils were sourced. It matters to the quality and purity to ensure maximum benefit and safety to you but most importantly it matters because of who it can help alongside the benefits you get from using that oil.
The meaning of Purity, Quality and Service for doTERRA is so much bigger than just using essential oils to clean your counter tops or improve your sleep.
For a $35 initial membership fee, you have access to the best essential oils and natural products in the world as well as ability to impact thousands of lives beyond those of your own and your family. Become a member today! IT MATTERS!
Please reach out to me with any questions and information at amyk@dragonspitapothecary.com
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