COFFEE TALK: A MILLION DOLLAR ADVICE

During the inception of DXN, I spent a lot of time in Indonesia as it was our company's biggest market. During that period of time, I met Jimmy Quedding, our crown ambassador, in the Philippines. We usually refer to him as JQ. He joined DXN in Indonesia and brought our company to the Philippine market. At that time, many people used to rush into DXN in Indonesia, and our meetings recorded close to 1000 people. This crowd convinced JQ that our company would flourish in the Philippines.

Eventually, we started the registration process and import formality for bringing our products into the Philippines. I advised JQ not to for all the formalities to finish before advertising our company in their country. I requested him to form a primary group of members for DXN to have a good start in the market.

JQ took my advice and started assembling people for a meeting that was funded completely by his own earnings. He sent around 200 invitations. However, only three people attended the meeting, and they were his wife, his driver, and himself. The first meeting was an utter disaster. After the meeting, JQ arrived in Indonesia to meet me. I asked him to keep trying to gather people. After four unfruitful tries, JQ came back to me in tears. He was worried that this was his last shot at an MLM company due to his age (he was 60 at the time). If he fails in this, then there is no way of coming back.

He requested me to give him my best advice. I called this the “Million Dollar Advice.” All I told him was to take a hot shower and get some rest that night. And after he went back to the Philippines, I asked him to do it all over again. He was rather astonished by hearing this. In DXN, we never take failure as an answer. The more we stall and crash, the more we try. This time I accompanied JQ to the Philippines as I wanted to see what went wrong in person. About a dozen people attended that meeting. After a brief introduction, I asked the crowd to take part in a Question-and-Answer session.

While listening to their concerns, I realized that the main issue was that health companies were declining at that time in the Philippines. As huge companies from countries like the USA and Australia failed, people were skeptical of how a small company from Malaysia would succeed in this market. Understandably so, our main products at the time were RG and GL, both of which are healthy foods.

We adapted to this situation by resetting our entire marketing policy. We chucked RG and GL and went ahead with the coffee 3 in 1. I was worried if I would be laughed at for this change in the product, but I did not bother about it. I asked our audience if they loved drinking coffee. For people in the Philippines, coffee is a part of their staple diet. I said to the audience, “Cheers! Drink DXN coffee and become a millionaire!” This became a famous quote in DXN.

They loved the idea and jumped on board as members. We avoided the mistake we made in Indonesia, which helped make the Philippines a blooming market for our company.