Why I Call It the Genius and the Goodness of Social Business 3.0
This blog will introduce you to the amazing work of my friend, Sam Caster.
My late wife and I taught the Marriage and Family class at Christ For The Nations Institute in Dallas, Texas during the spring semesters of 2008 through 2010. At some point, we met Sam and Linda Caster and discovered that they were the adoptive parents of five children. They were the perfect couple to come speak on that subject at our Marriage and Family class. They came and gave their presentation during two of the three years that we oversaw that class. This allowed us to get to know them better and spend some additional time with them. Without elaboration, we were very impressed with them and found them interesting and delightful on various subjects of discussion, both in the class and when we had lunch with them afterward, and at fortuitous rendezvous with them beyond that point.
This is where we discovered Sam’s expertise as the founder and leader in the nutritional direct sales industry. He headed up a very large company. He had no small input concerning this subject, and I was personally inspired by the discussions we had, as I have had a long interest in this kind of thing. So he led an international direct sales company, but what I began to learn more about was the non-profit organization Sam founded. It’s called MannaRelief. I later interviewed him for a podcast, and this excerpt is Sam Caster explaining how MannaRelief got started.
“Well, it started for us, Tony, when my wife and I have always had a heart for fatherless children. We adopted all of our kids. That’s just what God put on our heart. Now you have five children, Right? We have five children. We were supporting financially an orphanage organization out of Romania. And, you know, the caregiver in charge of the organization came to us and thanked a small group of us here in Dallas for our contributions and, you know, gave an accountability of what they had done with the money. But at the end of the conversation, she said something to the effect, but it’s heartbreaking to see what’s going on with our children. They’re sick all the time. And in our organization, we’re losing 30 to 40 kids a year.“
“Now, this is 1997. I had been in the advanced nutritional research and development industry for about four years, looking at how do you do extracts of vitamins and minerals from whole food? What are the best immune-modulating molecules in plants? All the things that contribute to quality of life. And here’s a lady talking about 30 to 40 kids a year dying in this one organization, and everything was a malnutrition-related issue. So I knew the work that I was doing would make a contribution. So afterwards, I just said, look, this is what I do. This is my business. I know we can impact the quality of life of your children. We had to look for the right kind of delivery system because, again, you can’t just make something and kids will eat it in a foreign country. We tried a few different delivery systems and some liked it and some didn’t. You know, we put it in gummy bears. We put it in food products. Actually, where we finally got to is if we just leave it in a powder, they can put it in whatever the food the kids like to eat and convert that food in the most nourishing thing they’ll ever eat. That was sort of our strategy that we ended up with. So anyway, we sent this powder to this orphanage organization in Romania. The end of the year came. They came back. They were ecstatic. They said our kids are healthier than they’ve ever been. And for the first time in over a decade, not one child died in our organization. And I’m sitting here with my wife and I got to tell you, I’ve been rewarded in business as an entrepreneur every way you can possibly be rewarded. But nothing was as meaningful as that lady saying for the first time, not one child died. Because for the first time I realized that what God gifted me to do could be connected to the lives of the world’s most vulnerable children. And I could make a difference in the world.“
“The other thing the lady said is that not only do we want more for next year, but every organization that we’re connected with wants to know where can they get it. Because they’re all networked together, these orphanage organizations. So we realized the need was much bigger than our capacity to do it on a one-by-one basis. That’s when we started MannaRelief, the not-for-profit organization that would go and raise money to provide this nutritional whole food powder to children all over the world. That’s how we got started.“
Sam and I went our separate ways for a few years, and one night in the spring of 2014, I had reason to notice a news item via my smartphone. It was a news release from Sam’s direct sales company that he had resigned. I was surprised by this update, but as soon as I read the news item, a single thought captured my mind. “Something significant is about to happen here,” I thought. I guess I had gleaned enough from Sam at my periodic interchanges with him previously that I had concluded that Sam is not the resigning type, or the retiring type, or the stand idly by and do nothing type. His convictions and sense of purpose run deep. That had become obvious to me. My wife and I would be on the road during that time, and we found the opportunity to call Sam. We had his phone number still on our smartphones, and I was eager to ask, Okay, Sam, what’s up? What’s happening here? You’ve resigned, and you’re surely up to something. Please tell us what it is.
What he was about to share confirmed that I had hit the nail on the head. Having just come out of a three- or four-year struggle to fund his MannaRelief mission, he immediately provided us the information about what he had begun to learn, which for him started in 2011, concerning the idea of Social Business. This was a new idea to me. The concept, though, had arrested Sam dramatically, and he said that he planned on implementing it, but the board of his previous company determined not to go that route. Sam’s resignation would be the start-over point so he could go do what was in his heart.
Even Sam’s previous company’s news release said as much. And this is a quote from that news release. “He,” Sam, “will use his skills to focus on his calling of caring for malnourished children throughout the world.” Because I knew he wanted to rescue the malnourished children of the world, when he began his explanation of Social Business to me, the first pictures that went through my head, and I told him so, were visions of a large box truck traveling down a dirt road in the deepest part of Africa. Upon arriving in a village, the contents of the truck were unloaded, revealing a cereal-like powder substance that was mixed with water. The village citizens, many of which were children and characterized by hunger and distended stomachs, stood in a distribution line to acquire this food item that they were very grateful to consume. I knew I must have gotten that portrayal from some public service announcement somewhere on TV from my distant past.
I remember Sam’s response to this picture I painted. “Don’t get me started.” I’d hit a nerve. He then explained, in his typically calm demeanor, that the scenario I painted does indeed fill the stomachs of those who are the most desperate, but that nutrition is still very much in question. He shared with me that his vision included delivering legitimate whole food nutrition to the most vulnerable on the planet, which was a repeat of what I already knew about MannaRelief, but now there was a significant change in strategy.
He was about to help me understand Social Business in general and the particular kind of Social Business he planned on implementing in specific.
By the way, he’s not the only source whose opinion it is that nutrition is woefully missing from the foodstuffs we deliver to third world countries. The nonprofit organization Doctors Without Borders came out in 2007 saying that food is not enough. They said that millions of children are still not getting nutrition in spite of American subsidies of corn, wheat, and soy. Of course, the subsidies end up being heavily processed grain-based cereals. Therefore, the nutrition is virtually depleted.
This was the opportunity for Sam to explain to me that the particular model of Social Business he planned on implementing would open the doors wide for all people to get involved and then do something radical. Pay the promoters of the project for the results they helped produce. That was also a new concept, but it struck me as genius. This would thereby empower MannaRelief Forward movement around the globe. As a result, I would soon begin to refer to it in my blogs and podcasts as the Genius and the Goodness of Social Business.
It took Sam some time to get things rolling, but by 2016, Gail and I were ready to jump in with both feet. I did some due diligence. I wrote over 60 blogs on the subject. I read books Sam recommended. I wrote two social business long-form webinar scripts. We even started a podcast called Social Business: The Heart of the Matter, and completed five podcast episodes by September 2016. Sadly, though, our involvement with Social Business, with Sam and Linda, never went any further, as Gail would soon be diagnosed with breast cancer and nd even more threatening, a significant heart issue had developed. She died later at the end of that same year.
Concerning my social business involvement, I tried. But for obvious reasons, I had lost all focus. The personal loss was too great, and I would not engage the Social Business wisdom again for around five and a half years. By that time, Sam’s business building strategies had been given a chance to mature and solidify. However, I kept consuming the nutritional products. I had learned enough to know just how important they were, so I did not want to be without them. But now, I’m back in the Social Business saddle.
What is the definition of the MannaRelief mission?
MannaRelief provides direct nutraceutical aid to malnourished children globally. Its ultimate mission is to substantially address the largest social problem in the world. Seven million children die yearly because of malnutrition and related complications. So I’m here to share the details behind the MannaRelief Master Plan to do something about it.
MannaRelief now measurably moves its mission forward by employing a concept called Social Business 3.0, which means this non-profit charity organization started a for-profit direct sales business called Alovéa. This company exists in the market to possess and offer best-in-class nutritional technologies of which they own exclusive rights for distribution. These technologies are without a doubt some of the best in the world. Fold all of that into this Social Business 3.0 model and it becomes a formidable strategy that puts them in the driver’s seat in the direct sales market.
And so I’m clear, what makes MannaRelief/Alovea a Social Business is that they implement a buy one, give one model. This is when a consumer buys a nutritional product for themselves, and upon doing so, that same amount of nutrition is matched and given to a child in need. Most direct sales companies have one, maybe two, home-run products or technologies that they offer. We’re submitting that among a suite of products, we have several home-run products, and in this presentation, I’ll tell you about one of them. It is our front-runner and is also the reason why our mission to nourish children proves effective in multiple corners of the globe.
Among a suite of nutritional technologies, Acemannan is MannaRelief/Alovea’s primary nutritional technology. Acemannan, the stabilized aloe vera plant extract, is also employed globally by MannaRelief to turn on a child’s immune system. This can be the difference between life and death.
Acemannan is nature’s most powerful immune-optimizing molecule. It is found in two places in nature, in the aloe vera plant and in human breast milk. In a day and age when nutraceutical companies are spouting over and over again that their products will boost the immune system, Acemannan stands out as head and shoulders above everything out there. This kind of nutritional support has provided unprecedented quality of life improvements to the world’s most vulnerable children for the last 25 years.
We encourage honest research into the Acemannan usefulness, but whatever you do, please don’t throw Acemannan into the pile of products that claim to only boost the immune system. I mean, eating an apple will boost your immune system. But that’s the least that Acemannan does. Almost all our other products have Acemannan added into the ingredients list. Actually, the research indicates that Acemannan modulates the immune system, meaning if the immune system is overactive or underactive, it will help to stabilize it. This is why it is incredibly effective among the vulnerable children we send it to around the world.
Social Business 3.0 is a business strategy with a mission focus we have implemented to save the lives of medically fragile children, the most vulnerable among us, and it allows endorsers, promoters, and Social Business builders to earn income by promoting product distribution in the market. Because the mission is so front and center in all we do, the accompanying financial rewards are often treated like a byproduct. This is because success is not measured in dollars earned, though earnings are a very generous dynamic of our paradigm, but by the number of children nourished, the main reason we exist.
When some are tempted to say that this is a marketing strategy with a social mission added to it, like you might see in other businesses, the truth of the matter is that we are instead a social mission with a marketing strategy added to it. This idea might just be the reason a reformation of the direct sales industry is at hand, as we have discovered that we can speak louder with our consumption than we can with our charity. I conclude that the children we hope to help are the ones who are the most desperate for our Social Business success. To the degree we are successful with our Social Business 3.0 strategy is the degree to which we address this social cause noticeably.
Do other social organizations raise funds this way? Maybe you have heard of these other Social Businesses, Tom’s Shoes, Warby Parker Eyeglasses, and Bombas Socks, and there are many others. They all have a buy one, give one social business model. It is a best practice in the social business industry. My daughters have purchased Tom’s Shoes, and I wear Warby Parker Eyeglasses.
And aren’t you also familiar with the work of other social organizations that enter the market to generate funds? Consider the Girl Scouts. They enter the market at the beginning of the year and in a six to eight week window of time generate $750 million of cookie sales to further advance their social organization.
Other social groups, non-profit organizations, public and private schools, and their patrons shamelessly tap the market, even go door-to-door to sell candy, popcorn, cookie dough, magazine subscriptions, and pizzas. Even churches have bake sales and chili cook-offs. Why do these organizations choose this route? Whatever might be their various financial objectives, they do this because the market is where the money is. And by the way, statistically, 70% to 80% of the total money generated by nonprofits comes from the sale of goods and services. So technically, Social Business is a fundraising strategy of almost all social organizations. Because, let me say it again, that is where the money is. The marketplace.
By the way, it’s important to clear this up. All the social business efforts I just mentioned here are in the Social Business 1.0 and 2.0 categories. I’m not taking the time to explain all the differences here, but suffice it to say 1.0 and 2.0 do not make room for their many promoters and endorsers to earn income. That is not a part of the model, whereas Social Business 3.0 does. That’s the main and most important difference.
By embracing Social Business 3.0, MannaRelief has set in motion a premier culture among its promoters that is highly incentivized, purpose-driven, and mission-heavy, and that everyone can feel really good about. Mission heavy because we not only address vulnerable orphans and needy children globally, but we also support other such outreaches and research projects that are rescuing lives and improving the quality of the life and health of children, employing the advanced nutrition provided by MannaRelief.
Examples are the dozens of orphanages under the auspices of Vamos Mexico, run by the former president of Mexico, Vicente Fox, and his wife, Marta. Vicente Fox hosted the first Social Business symposium in Latin America and invited Sam Caster to attend. He did attend, and Sam’s Social Business master plan started to take shape.
Or consider the work of Dr. David Ajabadi, who leads the Brain and Body Foundation in Nigeria. His work among sickle cell anemia victims by the use of proprietary products provided by MannaRelief is seeing a significant impact on quality of life issues among some of the worst sickle cell cases.
Then contemplate the research of Dr. Renee Hertie, who has wanted to cure cancer since she was in fifth grade. She eventually became smarter than a fifth grader and now heads up the Dream for the Cure Foundation. She has incorporated our main proprietary product, the stabilized aloe vera extract, Acemannan, into her immunotherapy trials and is experiencing great outcomes.
MannaRelief also partners with Convoy of Hope, a relief organization that reaches 113 countries. And we have just started. MannaRelief, our mother organization, has been addressing childhood malnutrition for over 25 years. From time to time, and much too often, they struggled to accomplish their mission because they were subject to the unpredictability of the charity-donor model. Collecting donations is what Sam Caster calls full-time fundraising and part-time work. This kept Manor Relief in a sporadic up-and-down financial condition. In the good years, as Sam puts it, they inched upward and could nourish 50,000 children a day. But in the bad years, during a national economic downturn, maybe 20,000. In the bad years, imagine this, Sam had to field phone calls from orphanages around the world pleading that MannaRelief does not forget about their group of children. As Sam expressed it in an interview I did with him…
When things started shifting economically for us because we started losing our donor base, I mean, hundreds of not-for-profits actually just went out of business here in the United States during that 2008, 2009, 2010 timeframe. So what we started looking for is what is a more sustainable way of providing income. Because children die of malnutrition. They don’t get a second chance. It’s not like, well, next year we’ll catch up. You know, I mean, they’re gone. For us as an organization, we live through that. I mean, we just have to adjust economically. Kids don’t live through that. So it’s critical to find sustainable funding because these kids need nutritional support not once a year, but every day of their life.
With all that in mind, this nonprofit charity, in touch with poignant global social realities, realized that Social Business was the route they must take. And as Sam said, it was the only thing that made sense. The way they had been doing it for most of those 25 years certainly made a whole lot less sense. Another example where necessity became the mother of invention.
So Manor Relief intentionally founded Alovea. They mobilized this for-profit company for the express purpose of addressing the largest social problem in the world. Implementing Social Business 3.0 meant they would compensate their team builders and do so with generosity, rewarding them for their personal effort. This kind of financial empowerment is part of the genius of what makes up the Social Business 3.0 strategy.
Then there is the issue that makes the genius even more obvious. The answer is that it contributes to what every social cause desperately needs and wants, but which is very often absent, even when the best of nonprofit organizations and charities are involved. What would that be? Sustainability. In other words, an environment where children can be nourished every day, just like you and I are. That is why this is so exciting.
Think of it this way. If we generate enough nutrition this month to cover a certain number of children, then the social business 3.0 model we use must have the capacity to repeat that same nutrition next month and and every month following without fail, right? That’s called sustainability. And a direct marketing Social Business strategy, like we have with MannaRelief and Alovea, is this kind of repeat business, where team members commit to consuming matching products monthly, and is why sustainability for our social cause can be the case.
But let me say it more clearly. A direct marketing or direct sales strategy is the only reason this can be the case. Why? Because direct marketing allows all people to get involved in not just the social purpose, the mission side, but the nutritional products, the market side, and the potential earnings, the entrepreneurial side, if that’s what they choose to do. These same people join a like-minded, mission-focused team, and these teams build teams of teams, increasing the impact. And yes, we have a customer base. 80% of our gross sales are customers. But we also enlist Social Business Partners, and we have an Affiliate program as well.
The language I use here is borrowed from the author David Bornstein, who not only coined the term Social Business 3.0 in his book, Social Entrepreneurship, What Everyone Needs to Know, but who also said, “Social Business 3.0 looks beyond institutions to the change-making potential of all people and their interactions. It recognizes that social entrepreneurship is contagious and enables more people at every age to think and behave like change-makers and to help them work together powerfully in teams and in teams of teams.”
Sam Caster says, real change in the world is never facilitated or caused by institutions. It’s always done by people movements. David Bornstein agrees. He calls this “the emergence of the citizen sector. People who have departed from the top-down centralized problem-solving model to instead harness creative problem-solvers far and wide.” Even the United States Constitution references who the sovereign entities of this country are. We the people.
In other words, Social Business 3.0 allows people, all people, to not only demonstrate their compassionate interest in this social cause, but it enables them to enjoy a vested interest where they have a personal stake in the undertaking. In the MannaRelief Alovéa context, this starts with the improved health benefits from the high-quality nutritional products and moves toward the potentialities of financial earnings. Both are rewards for endorsing and promoting this project in a team-building environment.
Sam Caster explains, “…when you package direct sales in the form of Social Business, it changes everything. You can talk to anybody, anytime, about a company that has developed the best technologies for meeting the biggest challenges that children face in the world. And when we provide those technologies to consumers, we link their purchases to the needs of children. And you get compensated based on the number of children you are impacting. It is an incredible model.”
Sam Caster’s past experience as a leader of a direct sales organization is not without a great deal of merit. He ran such an organization for 20 years and grew that company to half a billion dollars a year. Under his leadership, $3 billion of Ace Manning’s sales were generated in 26 countries of the world. Sam’s attitude toward employing Social Business to rescue children on a global level is just that much more highlighted in his personal life, as he and his wife Linda, as was mentioned earlier, are the proud parents of five adopted children, two of which have an international origin.
But shouldn’t profit incentives be restricted for the sake of the social cause? If we’re not careful, we slip into an existential guilt trip. Meaning we realize that there’s this huge injustice in the world, so we think it better if we go into a sacrifice mode, that we forego personal desires and even grovel over the realization that this global malnutrition blight has made such an evil impact on so many, and to not sacrifice, to not grovel, is equally unjust. Plus, not many of us have done anything about it until now, driving us deeper into the abyss of mindless guilt.
But existential guilt reveals its distortion in how easily satisfied it is by only throwing money at social problems. This superficial mentality is somehow supposed to magically relieve us of the reproach we feel. But in reality, it falls short of legitimate compassion that thinks clearly and acts deliberately to deliver authentic solutions.
If we look at this social concern close enough with an eye for the authentic solution, then we will conclude that dealing with this problem on an existential guilt level is irrational. It’s nonspecific. It is misfocused. It really is a contorted and sappy logic. So then with this kind of mentality in tow, do we really expect the results so desperately needed in all corners of the globe to rise to higher levels? No, of course not.
Let me paraphrase from a statement in a book entitled Uncharitable, How Restraints in Nonprofits Undermine Their Potential by Dan Pallotta. “Is the mother of a child who just died of malnutrition comforted by the fact that no one earned a decent profit in the failed social effort of the nonprofit organization to save her daughter?” The answer is, no, of course not. This is a poignant and penetrating question. Most social organizations, especially non-profit organizations that build their financial base on the funding of donors, in part or in whole, have to run things based on a different set of rules and expectations. So what they do is keep salaries, overhead, and advertising at a minimum, lest they be seen as wasting their donors’ money, or worse yet, be seen as withholding money from the social cause.
And they must always stay in a risk-averse mentality. In other words, they don’t dare take any risks. And furthermore, they don’t dare embrace a profit motive. Many of them have abandoned it altogether. And you know what profit I’m talking about, the profit that would help their cause. They expect their donors to get their money from the market and to take risks and embrace profit motives. So why doesn’t the nonprofit go to the market too? And of course, statistically, they do. They eventually do, and they should. But these other sets of nonprofit rules, many of which are unwritten, undermine their potential, which was the focus of Pallotta’s book. And I agree.
Again, there are some exceptions, but the potential of your average nonprofit goes untapped either because of the existential guilt thing or the idea that there are those unwritten rules of engagement that keep them undermined.
Then on the other hand, if allowed, there can exist on the for-profit side the obsession with bottom-line profits, to the point that social needs are abandoned or ignored altogether. This happens because of greed, perhaps, or doing what it takes to keep investors happy. It’s bottom line thinking with a small dose of social cause added to look good.
But the presence of a social resolve or social mission is becoming more and more an expectation among the general public. They want to know that the businesses they frequent have a social focus. And if they don’t, they are proving less likely to patronize that business. As Sam pointed out to me in an interview I did with him, This kind of social non-involvement by businesses is more and more considered by the public as strategy malpractice. If a business is going to make money intentionally and proactively, then the public is saying that social causes ought to be folded into the business plan because it’s just the right thing to do. I certainly can’t judge the motives of for-profit business leaders, but I hope that such leaders don’t just give an impression of social engagement.
Social entrepreneur and author Nick Francis calls this “tinker(ing) around the edges.” He said that Social Business should become a business building guiding principle for entrepreneurs and capitalists.
But to the other point of the question concerning charitable organizations and profit incentives, MannaRelief might easily be inclined to shift the lion’s share of its cash flow to focus more on the social need because existential guilt calls for it. However, Sam Caster knew that if the social cause was to be effectively financed, and that is the real goal, then they would have to design their strategy to first empower their proponents through a for-profit undertaking. This would be the basis for successfully competing in the market for the sake of the lives they hope to save. Sam knew that it would not work to announce that because we give to a social cause, we pay our people less.
And why is this important? At the end of the day, the MannaRelief/Alovea proponents, (its Customers, Affiliates, and Social Business Partners) the ones who push this project across the finish line, have to feel good about their place in the big picture. This mission gains ground by the efforts of these proponents who tap the market.
Therefore, a compensation structure is in place that is probably the most generous in the direct sales industry. At the end of the day, those of us who work to advance this Social Business must still be able to address personal financial issues like making a living or generating enough extra income to address present inflation realities or just tapping another revenue source to benefit ojr families. This philosophy of rewarding our proponents and workers as a priority of our marketing strategy has successfully kept the statistics for our social mission moving upward in a consistent manner–up and to the right–which was simply not the case during the years that MannaRelief relied solely on the charity donor model of support.
So, can we compete in the market? Well, the succinct response is put our proprietary best-in-class products, our generous compensation plan, our international marketing prowess, and our Social Business 3.0 model under the microscope of the most intense scrutiny and compare who we are, the conditions that exist for business growth, and what we offer against everything out there, and the answer is an indisputable: Yes.
A company with such a high sense of social mission to save lives also means that we who promote it must embrace an equally elevated industry ethic. We cannot be found guilty of polluted compassion. Therefore, we don’t do marketing hype or sales fluff, anything that diverts our attention away from the mission or compromises the value system that is apropos to those committed to this kind of mission.
In a recent Zoom call I arranged, I introduced Sam Caster to a team of direct sales entrepreneurs who heard him tell the MannaRelief/Alovea story, and then they interviewed him. This accomplished team had frankly come to the end of their rope working with a particular and renowned direct sales company they had been with for a decade. In this interview, and after doing an extreme amount of due diligence, they found all the reasons they needed to join the MannaRelief/Alovéa project. Their greatest discovery included the authenticity that existed in the MannaRelief/Alovéa undertaking that they had longed for in their previous company, but which had dissipated. They have now engaged MannaRelief/Alovéa and are building their teams.
There’s much more to say about ethics, and much more is said at this website on the subject. But for now, let me put an exclamation point on this ethics discussion, as it seems to me that there is another ethical imperative at hand to consider. Is it as obvious to you as it is to me? Namely, no child should be malnourished. Period. No child anywhere should be malnourished. And that ethical imperative makes a demand of us, doesn’t it? But our solution is not driven by guilt. We have an effective and legitimate strategy in motion to address it.
In that Zoom call, Sam then took it a step further and referenced not only the global mission to rescue malnourished children, which makes us stand out, but the fact that our main driving force in the market particularly must be and is our advanced nutritional technology base.
This was his acknowledgement that many love our mission. Of course they love our mission. I love our mission. But the most practical question is to ask, against the backdrop of a glorious global mission, what benefits do we offer the market? Is it legitimate? Is it substantial? Is it efficacious? After all, the market funds our mission. It is imperative then that we be successful there. Our bold mission demands an equally robust market offer.
Our best-in-class nutritional technology base is especially spotlighted here. As Sam pointed out, “especially when there is this huge and poignant need for the transformation of health care in the world. This health care environment affects the entire population. They are already intensely looking for answers. What is happening in the world today is not working. We cannot keep up with the rising cost of healthcare as it exists. It will break the bank in every country of the world. It is unsustainable,” Sam said.
So what is happening is that consumers in the market are forced to rethink personal health care. Like never before, people are in the market looking to find alternatives that can give them better quality of life outcomes. And the first thing they have to navigate is the fact that 95% of the nutraceuticals on the shelf at the local grocery store are synthetic. Then there are recent national and global developments where tens of millions remain unnerved by the leadership given us by the medical industry complex. People everywhere are recalibrating their thinking with a new focus on the immune system.
They are asking the question, how can I take care of myself? And you know what that’s called? A market. All this points to a very large market of consumers looking for solutions. Sam’s point is that though our mission is pregnant with potential and serves to provide us a great deal of motivation, our product offering to the market is undeniably on the leading edge, already addressing this very real and growing global healthcare urgency.
He elaborated that MannaRelief/Alovéa has not only found efficacious products with Acemannan leading the way, but we made them proprietary, meaning we own them. We own the exclusive rights of distribution. This is another distinction of the marketing genius that defines us. We’re in the driver’s seat. So we enter the market with high anticipation that’s tempered by sobriety about the health care environment around us.
The health care need is obvious, but we do not have to prop up our mission or our social business with tasteless sales tactics because such things do not serve our global mission or our market presence well at all. They don’t fit who we are and simply stated we don’t have to go there. We are on high moral ground here. This is because our mission’s greatest appeal is that it travels the high road in tandem with our advanced, best-in-class market offering.
Our mission is not only worthy, but our market presence is legitimate and cutting-edge, characterized by its own high sense of value. Those two values together, mission reach and market offering, create a dominant synergy.
With such a promising and effective solution at our fingertips, maybe you understand now why we can but only seek to enlist others in this Social Business team as Customers or Social Business Partners. Yes, I could hope that you would allow me to add your name to my recruiting list, but what I hope is that once you see what’s going on here, that you would do what I did. I added myself to the list. But everyone can get involved in some way and can help MannaRelief save lives too.
Hopefully what you have noticed is that we have embraced a completely different mindset and paradigm. We are now a new school of mission-minded social entrepreneurs. We engage the market to save lives. Because the need remains staggering, large relief organizations are certainly on the global scene, some of which enjoy funding from governments. But as Sam unapologetically points out,
“There is not enough money in the charity environment to support all the organizations that are trying to do good work. The money is in the marketplace. That’s when you get into the trillions. You know, the marketplace holds the key to everything in terms of funding. So social business is about tapping into the power of the marketplace. To bring sustainable funding and sustainable solutions to global problems that nobody can touch. Governments are too ineffective, too broke, too corrupt in many cases to pay attention. Businesses are too concerned with bottom lines. Charities have the right heart and passion, but don’t have the revenue. So social business holds the key.”
We know that there are indeed many other respectable organizations that hope to do damage to global malnutrition. We wish them well, and as mentioned, we work with some of them. But we know of no one who uses our particular model of Social Business 3.0 where the value of matching nutrition is front and center and blended with compensating our promoters.
I have mentioned this more than once on this blog post, but we believe that this blended value forms a fresh and powerful synergy that can contribute to propelling this project forward, where purpose and profit work for each other’s success.
So how realistic is it to assume then that we can deliver the kind of influence that would address 7 million children? We’ve done the math. The average number of products purchased monthly by those individuals in the Alovea network of Customers, Affiliates, and Social Business Partners is three. Then factor in the buy one, give one model. How many would we need on this MannaRelief/Alovéa team to take on that audacious number? The answer is around 2.5 million. That represents less than 1% of the total population of the United States. And we are presently doing business in other countries besides.
A statistic from the last decade points to the fact that people involved in direct marketing grew from 15 million to 51 million in that 10-year period. And so that you understand the perspective even further, Sam Caster’s former direct sales company grew to 3 million. I think you would agree that this mission certainly feels doable.
The 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus is known for establishing the social business of microcredit, also known as microfinance. His Nobel Prize has made Social Business much more than just a good idea. Under his leadership, he turned a bank into a Social Business that impacted 40 million people. And this became the standard for addressing poverty in third world countries. He said that when you financially compensate participants in a given social project, they will drive your cause to the ends of the earth.
MannaRelief and Alovea have mobilized the Social Business 3.0 model to serve both those of us who want to carry it to the ends of the earth and those who need its nutrition the most.
This project finds its empowerment when we embrace the MannaRelief mission, and this project is further energized as we give ourselves to the advancement of the Alovea Social Business 3.0 paradigm. I encourage readers to learn all they can about what is underway here and however it is that you may decide to get involved, I hope you will always be careful to maintain good works, to meet urgent needs, and become heroes to your generation.