And so even before this, I realized that needed to change. I don't want to boast because it's really hard. That's why I have that social media presence—it's fun, but it shows how unbelievably difficult it is to succeed. If I can do it as a fat 57-year-old, you can do it. I started eating a little better, got my blood looked at.
Yeah, you shouldn't be so judgmental. I'm fighting jet lag and a long way from home, so I'm doing my best.
Traveling with—I send Lara while you wait here. She can keep an eye on.
I send Lara while you wait here. She can keep an eye on.
Well, she doesn't have to because you're here moaning about protein and not letting me have my Diet Coke in the morning.
Not let me have my Diet Coke in the morning.
Yeah, it's so weird to drink Diet Coke in the morning for breakfast.
It's not healthy for you, you know.
For me, it works perfectly. Wonderful.
My son, just to tell you a story about Coke. We always tell our son Jean Paulo, don't drink it, it's very bad for your health. One day when he was older, he said, 'But you drink.' And I had no answer. He wanted to try it, so we said, 'Okay, you can try it.' We were very lucky because he hated it.
Oh, don't worry, he'll find something.
Yeah. But then, if you are healthy, you just need to take out things that—it's energy. Wellness is all about energy. Life takes a lot of energy, and the more energetic you can be, the more helpful it is for success. That's the physical part. Emotional, mental, physical, occupational, environmental—all these are vital to mental well-being, being ever learning.
You know, to think that you've reached a certain point that you don't need to learn anymore—of course not.
But I can imagine today when you were at the sea, you were working not only your physical health but also your mental. I think it's 90% mental. Working out is 90% mental. Losing weight is 80% what you eat and 20% exercise. For me, 90% of working out is mental—that willingness to win. My victories are difficult to see from the outside, but on the inside they're massive. This morning it was quite rough in the ocean. 90% of the time you can't see where you're going. Every now and then a wave goes up and you get a flash of light, a direction to go, and you see the buoy you're aiming for. Then for the next 10 strokes, you don't see anything. It's a great analogy for success. More often than not, I have absolutely no idea where the end is. I know the direction, but distractions and buffeting make you lose track. The idea is to be mentally strong enough that the vision never leaves—I can see that yellow triangle in my head always. That's the same as Forever. When I'm swimming, I'm a little scared, wondering if I have the strength to get back, what if a shark eats me? All those things go through your mind as you fight for success. Say you set yourself an example—I want to be an Eagle Manager. Probably 80% of that journey you're off track: the person didn't call back, didn't generate the case credit, didn't buy the product, a return, the guy didn't show up. But if you keep that Eagle in your vision and every stroke drives toward that, all of a sudden you'll look up and it'll be right there. That's how it's been for me.
You know, to think that we could have turned the company around like we have is nothing short of miraculous.
I do attribute that. I'm a religious guy, and I honestly think we've had God's help because there's no way we would have done it without Him. I hope I don't offend anyone, but that's how I see it. It would have been too difficult without divine help. It's been humbling. One of the biggest things for me with spiritual health is recognizing that you are smaller than something, that you are subject to something, that you are part of something bigger. That humility helps us to be a better person. When we arrive, we don't say 'Here I am,' we say 'There you are.' Spiritual health allows us to do that authentically.
That's nice. So move on to the three important pillars: wellness, community, and finance. You talked about wellness. And in community, you brought up Brazil and how we already have community, so how can we be strong on that? Also, you mentioned the challenge of being digital. I know there are many FBOs in other countries working successfully in digital. So what is digital?
That's a great question. This is Aiden's perception, and smarter people might disagree. I'm not well educated in this—you were teaching me how to use Instagram yesterday. I didn't even know what 'requests' was. Everybody from Brazil, if you tagged Aiden in your Instagram and he didn't repost, it's because he just found out there were thousands of you blocked on his Instagram. I had no idea until I sat with Paul on the plane. So, the way I see digital: years ago, one aspect of success in our business is to invite people to buy the product or join the business. That's fundamental. Then you need to find people to connect with. I honestly believe about 1-2% of the population are interested in what we do. 98% aren't. Think about 2% of the population—I bet not more than 0.2% are teachers. Imagine if you could have every teacher in your business. That's only 2%. So social media or digital allows us to find more effectively. The message stays the same, but more refined. We used to get names out of the phone book, write the number, and call. Or put cards, knock on doors. Now the card is social media, the door is social. My vision for digital is twofold. For an FBO: tell your authentic story, but tell it well. Clean your camera, make sure your microphone works, learn how to use CapCut. A monkey could learn CapCut. Spend a little time. It reminds me of my mom—she complained about social media, didn't understand it. My sister bought her an iPad and showed her Facebook. She was posting, sharing videos of her cat. Here's an expression: I don't understand electricity, but I refuse to sit in the dark. Even if you don't understand social media, tell your story. Turn the switch on, light up the room. Use it to show who you are authentically. Don't make stupid claims, income claims, or medical claims. Today, people are interested in your authentic story. Perfect example: me running along the beach doing my best to be better—50,000 people watch, some videos get 300-400,000 views. I have no idea why. I don't even know how to use it.
Now, on the company side, a little different.
Yes. On the company side, we have a vision to digitalize the company. The first thing we've been working on for about eight years is taking the marketing plan to the cloud. Historically, it sat on AS400 computers in every office. We've had to push it to the cloud. That's been massive, but the FBO hasn't seen it because it happens underground—like when you build a house, you put in plumbing and electrics, no one sees anything until the frame goes up. We're just about getting to the framing stage. Now we moved from AS400 systems to a cloud-based system that allows them all to talk at the same time. There will be a time when we have a business without borders within the Forever ecosphere, but not across governments because you can't transfer money across borders. The FBO will get paid one bonus check, but governments don't allow that—you earn money in Brazil, you get paid in Brazil. So our first goal was to cloud-base it. Then we had to look for a global ERP. That process is 30% in, moving forward with a system that gives us instant vision of the financial health of the company. Up until now, that wasn't available. We have consolidated financials, logistics reports, inventory reports. It's amazing how much more efficient we are. I want the FBO to be aware that 20-25 million a year gets invested into this, just at our side, not country-based. Then we have to make a decision about apps. Apps are extremely expensive to create and manage—Apple and Chrome want 30% of everything. So we're trying a PWA, an app-based web app. The good side is we have 100% control; the bad side is a refreshing process. We're looking at that in India. We recognize that mobile is the future. I bet over 85% of e-commerce goes through mobile, especially in South America, Latin America, and Africa. We have to get much more efficient on mobile. Our vision from an FBO point of view is an authentic way to tell your story. On the company side, we're making strides to push us into digital brilliance. That also includes the company getting more involved in telling Forever's story digitally. Then AI. Now we have the framework of our digital window. Another piece: if we do this linearly, it'll take a hundred years—France, then Germany, then England, then Brazil. So we had to generate an intelligent system. The idea is a base of APIs, and each country plugs into the API so they can work on it. That means you can see your case credits all over the world instantly, transact without borders, and see if you're an Eagle Manager instantly.
All you are saying, directly or indirectly, the FBOs are going to be more effective, our customer experience through the whole journey is going to be much better.
In terms of access, yes. It's going to take time.
The three years we're turning the business around from an emotional place. Remind me to talk about the investments at Ava as well. But I want to talk about AI in that digital experience. Currently, we see AI as supporting the message, not creating it. We're not confident enough. So supporting translations, clarifications, information—AI has a huge role. In fact, most of our global company policies are already open source in Portuguese. If you ask what it takes to be Eagle Manager in Brazil, it'll tell you. The next part is customer service with frequently asked questions in AI. As it improves, I think it will be huge for product—AI can tell your customer what the product does. It can also help you on what to say in your videos. That's how we see AI right now. We also use it to analyze data. For example, they recorded my presentation at a country manager meeting, uploaded it, and I can refer to it, write questions, and it answers based on the structure we set out in Paris. That's an amazing tool. FBOs can do the same: record what you do, put it up, and ask—it can keep your message consistent. I don't see it leading the company just yet. That might be my age, but I don't see enough value in it making decisions for us. I see it helping us crunch data more effectively, saving time on analysis, but analyzing the information and data is still with us. Numbers don't always show everything behind them; we still need someone who knows the story behind the numbers to take the best decisions.
