COFFEE TALK: PROBLEM BREWING IN INDONESIA

When we conduct our standard meetings, we go through the report made by various people in-charge. We have a strict policy: Everyone must report the bad news.

As humans, we take an interest in talking about good matters and about how successful we are. However, this does not help the company in any manner. When the leaders only report good news like an increase in sales and customer satisfaction, there is close to no room for us to improve our business. We can enhance our learning curve from bad news by making sure we don’t repeat those mistakes. It is more inspiring to share a story of a comeback than to gloat about one’s success.

In the past, I have spoken about the problems we faced as a company and how we overcame them by becoming the largest MLM company in Indonesia. We believe that love is unconditional. You cannot love someone for any particular condition or reason. Sometimes it is a one-way street. You may love someone, and it does not matter if they love you back. You must not be too innocent and ignorant to believe that if you love someone unconditionally, they would love you back. There is literally no guarantee about it.

DXN is proud to consider itself a tranquil organization. It is a rare occasion when we attack our competitors. We usually tend to mind our own business. We started the millennium with a bang. As mentioned earlier, we became the largest MLM company in Indonesia, and our sales started surging in India and the Philippines. Initially, though, things were pretty rough for us. The world did not welcome us with open hands. Eventually, everything fell in place, and we were reaping the benefits.

There were two issues with the company at that time, both internally and externally. Internally, many leaders had a feeling that they were not happy with the activities that were taking place in our company. They criticized everything from packaging and quality to the marketing plan and much more. Due to this, many of them resigned as they were unsatisfied and lost confidence in the company. Many of these people were working odd jobs before they joined us. We changed their lives for the better, but they did not seem to value it.

One person was earning close to $20 a month, and we all know that it is demanding and taxing to survive that way. Once he started working for us, he could earn enough to buy a house and make a living. Instead of staying back and enjoying the bread that he earned, greed overtook him, and he jumped ship to our competitors since they were offering a share of the company. He bid me goodbye, saying that he would invite me to dinner on his future yacht.

Soon, the company went bankrupt and collapsed. A similar case occurred in India as well. A valuable lesson that we learn from this is that a good income is not what happiness truly is. We must face life with courage and vigor.