Build America Up—Don’t Burn It To the Ground - Doug DeVos

Well, thank you. Thanks, John. It's great to be here. Really happy to connect with you and looking forward to this. So, we got connected through mutual friends and gosh, there's a lot we can talk about. You are part of the DeVos family, part of the family that created Amway. Yes. And so, you're a lot of things. You're a philanthropist, a businessman, a sailor, you work with the Constitution Center out of Philadelphia, the birthplace of my home, the birthplace of the country. I want to talk about America. You're re-releasing this book, Believe, with your dad. Yeah.

Mhm.

Yeah.

I guess. Never thought of it that way, but in a certain sense, right? You're a philanthropist, you're involved in a lot of things. We live in a world where trust in institutions is at an all-time low.

Sure. Sure. Well, thanks for that. That's a simple place to start, isn't it, John? Just dive on in. Wow, okay. But we know, even just casually getting ready for all this, I guess I would start and it goes back to the upbringing that I had, that I watched in the development of the Amway business and that I watched my father and his business partner, Jay Van Andel. They started with a fundamental belief in people. All people. Everyone. From every walk of life, from every different background. And that's never changed. The fascination with people: what do you do, where are you from, what happened, tell me about your family. The belief that everyone has special unique gifts and talents and tremendous potential. The opportunity you have as an individual or in a community to help somebody realize their potential, to pick a spot forward and see what they can do and how they can add value to their community. That never goes away. However people look at me or our family, that's up to them. But we get a choice of how we act and behave and think. As long as we keep focused on the things that are important, people, recognizing and respecting every person we meet, whatever their background, they're still worthy, created uniquely and special. As long as we can live that way, I feel fine being in the public square talking about issues important to me, just like others are. That's okay. I approach it with our expression of our values and who we are. People may agree or disagree, but that's okay.

Right? You know, because there's more to be done. We can get better, improve. There's more people that can live a better life. We need to stay focused on the conditions that have been created in the past where success flourishes more than other conditions where it's harder. You can look in our community, around the world, there's lots of experiences. But we're not done yet. Achieving a level of success doesn't mean you're finished. It means you've learned a lot more to hopefully contribute more and have more time to look beyond yourself and at the community around you. I was busy taking care of myself to begin with. There's nothing wrong with that. Every flight says if you lose cabin pressure, get your own oxygen mask and then help the person next to you. But there's that point where it says help the person next to you. We're all fulfilled when you have a chance to work with somebody and be a positive influence in their lives. You can't do it for somebody else, but you can be there with them. The satisfaction of watching them do that for themselves. Being a dad, watching that happen with your children, that's the most fulfilling thing you can imagine. Even when they're adults, they're not done. You still have that relationship. My relationship with my parents until they went home was special. You're always learning. My father had a great story. I walked in once, he's 90 years old, had a heart transplant 19 years before, not in the most healthy state. He says, 'Doug, I was just thinking about the next 50 years at Amway.' I said, 'That's great. You know you're 90, right?' He was always thinking of the future. Even when he had his heart transplant, he wanted to have a boat and sail around the world. This was my dream. While he was waiting, he was thinking about a trip and he goes, 'I may not do this with you, but you guys are going to have a great time.' He wanted to create a great adventure for his family even if he wasn't able to participate. So the thought of beyond your current levels of success or beyond your lifetime, what contribution are you making? What value are you adding to your community, to your family, with the talents that God's given you? That never gets old.

There you go. Yeah. And you know Michigan. You're a Michigander. You're an honorary Michigander now, John. I have the two kind of weird pronunciations, being largely like a Jersey boy born in Philly. I go down the shore or I go up north. Neither of which I think are technically grammatically correct. The Midwest of America... We talk about America like it's one country and it is one country, but it is a lot of different cultures.

Sure. Sure. You know, again, any community, any state has that diversity of culture. That's the beauty of America. That's what Ronald Reagan always said: you can go to Germany, but you can't be a German, but anyone can be an American. You get held together by a set of values. The culture I grew up in in Grand Rapids and Michigan was a very friendly, welcoming culture. It was polite, encouraging. It wasn't rough and tumble, someone trying to compete and beat you all the time. It was someone who wanted to help you and was encouraging when you could be successful. That was the environment I grew up in. When you had a crazy idea, someone would say, 'Go do it.' It had that entrepreneurial flair. Maybe one of the drawbacks is this thing, Midwest nice. So when something was really bad, you go, 'Well, it's okay,' rather than saying, 'That's not good.' You got to invite some people from Jersey in to shake people down. Get an Italian mother-in-law to explain all your problems to you. We need more guilt in our life. We're pretty good with that with our Dutch Christian Reformed heritage. We're good on guilt, too, so we can compete in that category. The Midwestern part of the country has its role to play. It's people, large farming communities that still exist. Our state, you think of Detroit and the manufacturing and the auto industry and suppliers throughout the state. It's a big manufacturing hub. But as you go up north, you see tremendous farming community and the depth of how that holds people together. Michigan has a lot of different aspects, but it still holds itself together. The relationship connection: you don't walk by people on the street, you greet them. You're not so focused on going somewhere else that you forgot about the person right next to you. I think those are some of the things that describe our area.

I think the main thing for me is technology in whatever form is a tool and it's up to us to figure out how to use it. But it can never replace human interaction. You can't build trust with a tool or technology. You have to build trust with individuals back and forth. Even though tools are going to be a lot better at having discussions or telling you things, it still doesn't have the same impact on an individual as somebody else applying their judgment or telling their stories and experiences. It's just relaying a bunch of other experiences. That might be helpful in some purpose, but use the tool the way you want to use it. A few people like to use it to create disharmony, division, and at least the illusion of that, and put pressure on people to publicly apologize for their stance or publicly agree with something they privately don't agree with. There's this pressure. I don't know if you've ever talked with Todd Rose about collective illusion. I'm aware of his work. I want to have him on the show. Todd would be spectacular. His whole piece of collective illusion, the book, there's a funny story at the beginning. I'll steal it from him a little bit. The whole idea was, when market research was beginning in the early days, 100 years ago, the scientists were first trying to figure this out. They went to a small town upstate New York to know it. They did some research and found out that according to the research, nobody smoked or drank or played cards. But they lived there and they knew that everybody smoked and drank and played cards. The answer they gave on the survey was that they didn't because the matriarch of the town, the head of the church, she was kind of the matriarch and the biggest funder of the church, didn't like smoking and drinking. So everybody publicly would say these things. I think there are people who want you to believe when technology amplifies their voice, and when they try to create this division, they want you to think it's everywhere. Because if you go on social media, you'll see it everywhere. It's on the news. You'll think, 'Oh my gosh, the world's going crazy, the country's falling apart.' But that's not the case. We shouldn't buy into that. Take everything with a grain of salt. I remember being in Washington, D.C. for a variety of business groups, the Michigan delegation, Republicans and Democrats. We would kind of say, 'I'm sure you guys aren't talking to each other.' And they would say, 'Actually, we do talk to each other. We disagree, but it's not as bad as you think.' I thought that was really interesting coming from people in the middle of that fight. I've heard some say that the culture in D.C. has gotten worse for a bunch of reasons. The sort of Reagan and Tipper Gore level of congeniality has gone down. Some of it has to do with them actually not living there anymore. When you have to move your family and be there together, you're living together. But when you're able to just inexpensively fly back and forth, you fly in, scream and yell at the Senate hearing or on the floor of the house, and then you're out. You can keep it at a distance. All these little things have contributed to a feeling that we're more separate from each other than we are.

The main thing I'm receiving is, it's easy for me to be in that world and think like that. But when you're in the middle of it, one of the things I'm actually trying to learn is, that's the other thing about getting older, you can keep learning. I'm not done learning. I'm not dead yet. We'll keep trying to learn. Be more specific. What do you mean by that? What's that position? Why do you say that? How do you justify that position? Where's that coming from? I need to do a better job. I don't have to attack somebody, but I have to maybe attack that idea. Really test somebody and expect that they're going to do the same for me. That's when you start to get to a depth where in a funny way you can build trust in that exchange even if it's difficult. With your Philadelphia background, I was involved in the National Constitution Center as you mentioned. You have scholars who really disagree. They have really good strong points of view. But they have a cup of coffee or a drink afterwards and they'll keep arguing. They'll be on the stage debating at events we host. But they don't hate each other. They just disagree. I'm trying to find the right way to be responsive and aggressive, really getting down to the nuts and bolts. Why do you think that's a good idea? What's your justification? Why should that turn into policy? Why do you think that's going to help people in our community? What's the outcome? Where has it been tested before? I've got to do a better job of asking questions rather than my Midwest nice going, 'I hope that works out for you. I don't think it will, but hope that works out for you. Give socialism a try, New York. Give it a try. See what happens.' But to say, 'No, it's not.' You don't want to go to bad places. You don't want to have people get into a bad situation and bad policy leads to that. So it's important.

Yeah, yeah. Wow, I mean, again, another simple topic to dive into here, John. I keep coming back to the ideals of our founding as a country. It was kind of for the first time in history, it had the words in the Declaration: all men are created equal, with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The pursuit of happiness is not to feel good, it's to be good, to pursue virtue. Again, another book from the CEO of the National Constitution Center, Jeff Rosen. We had an event once and a lot of people have talked about that. 'It's rigged. Why does the Constitution matter to me?' There was this view throughout history of the king and the peasants, the oppressor and the oppressed. Like all of human history, basically. Just read the Bible. It's just a lot of that. And there's a lot of that that exists today. But in America, Jeff did a wonderful job of articulating: this was the first time in human history that we declared that wasn't the case. That everybody had a chance and an opportunity, and that you were created equally. Now, we didn't live up to it from the very beginning. So we have to understand that. But that doesn't mean we can't improve and get better. The idea that everyone has worth and everyone has a purpose. If there's a young man or a young woman who doesn't know a purpose in life and feels the world is rigged against them, that's an easy exit. I think our job as adults is to say that's not the case. There's always been tough things in the world. My dad grew up in the midst of World War II, going off to war. That was a tough time. They grew up in the Depression. That was a tough time. There's lots of people who grew up in a lot of tough situations. But America is the best hope there is and the best example in the world of creating the most fair system. Is it perfect? No. Can we improve it? Yes. But it's the greatest opportunity. I think you and I to our children and to others, we can clearly advocate as you look throughout history and around the world, the opportunities here exist dramatically. Don't take the easy way out. Don't buy into the lie that the system is rigged. Is it the best it can be? No. Can you improve it? Yes. What can you do to take the next step forward? What's the next good decision you can make in your life? How to encourage and walk with people, especially young people, on that journey so they can find their way to purpose and meaning and a way to contribute. I don't want to give up at all. I completely reject that there's this lack of opportunity. I would get rid of my Midwest nice for a little while with somebody to say, 'No. You have value. Don't let anybody tell you you don't have value. Don't let anybody tell you that you don't have a future. Don't let anybody tell you that you can't find a mate, a spouse, that you can't have a family, that you can't participate in the things you thought about at the fundamental level. You may not be rich and famous, but you can have incredible value to your spouse, to your family, to your neighbor in a really important and meaningful way.' I think we got to talk about that more. I don't think we should be scared when everybody goes, 'No, that doesn't work. The family thing is a bad thing.' It's the oldest institution that's ever been created. It's not an evil patriarchy.

Yeah, yeah. You talk about in your writing and your dad talks about your faith and values. But these are very fundamental, the most basic human values. Why do you think that's becoming a political divide?

I was a nerd with bad skin. I still kind of have bad skin. All the memories are coming back now. It's killing me.

Yeah, yeah. You've been through this. I try the best I can. You have kids, there's no instruction manual. You ask your dad what you should do. Half the time it's like, 'I don't know. Here's what I did. What did you do?' Every situation's different. You just walk with them and love them and be there for them when they have questions. This is where being married is really good because I was gone a lot and a lot of time those questions would come up. That's what my wife did. So we did it together. Walk with them and find how to give them input, give them a perspective of what I'm seeing of this relationship or of them in this relationship, whether it's helping them be a better them or holding them back. It's all those subtle things to help your kids discover themselves. I don't have any expertise, but when you start talking about high school stuff, my whole mind goes, 'Oh my gosh.' We had to put ourselves out there. I think there's an interesting element here to explore. You remember having to call the girl's house and ask for a date and talk to the parent. If the dad answered, you're just praying she answers the phone. Now it's disconnected from that. It's a little safer that way, but it's not as real. Life is a contact sport. You got to run into people one way or another. The more you remove yourself from that, it's a little safer, cleaner, simpler, but not as rich. It doesn't have the same depth. Meeting somebody, understanding where they're from, simple conversations you can have even in passing. Say hi to the bellman. Where are you from? What's happening in town? Anything to have a conversation. You walk away and you met somebody today. That's the richness of living. God gave us each other to have that richness. Connect with people, learn about them because everyone's fascinating in their own way. If we stay curious, we'll learn something. If we distance ourselves, we may not have as much richness in our lives. So if someone's looking for that relationship, do it. Take a risk. Have courage. If you fail, do it again. Everyone's failed in life. How many unsuccessful attempts did you have? I had a lot of unsuccessful attempts at dating. Hopefully if you're lucky, I've been married now, it's 2025.

Yeah. One of the things I want to do as a kind of bridge into talking about Amway and about the history and what you've learned from it. There's this idea. I think we suffer from this as a society in a big way. Like you call it wealth disease. But inside families and multi-generational family businesses, especially when somebody who starts something becomes wildly successful, making sure your kids don't turn out to be trust fund brats is real hard. There's a lot of that that happens in our society. Shirt sleeves to shirt sleeves is three generations. It's like, 'I got an idea. I'm gritty. I survived the Depression. I'm not going to take no for an answer. I built this incredible thing and then my grandkids will have spoiled it, ruined it.' What has been your experience? You seem like a reasonable guy, a nice guy. We're just getting to know each other. But what did your parents do to keep you from being a spoiled brat?

Yeah, that's a... They taught me, they helped me understand what wealth really was, and it wasn't money. Wealth was the relationships that we had as a family. I say a lot of times...

I grew up incredibly spoiled, but not because of the money. It was because I had two parents who loved me and cared for me, and I had a family. I was the youngest, with older brothers and an older sister who looked out for me. But Dad never wanted to take away the joy of work. He wanted you to work and do something. When we had early Amway meetings, people came to our home next to the Van Andel family. I remember preparing: 'Can I take your coat? Can I get you a cup of coffee? Would you like a glass of water? Nice to meet you. Introduce yourself. Look them in the eye.'

That was it. It was fun. We made it fun. Working is fun. Doing something together is fun, rewarding, enriching. The view that wealth should make life easy is boring. When you don't have challenge, how fun is that? They taught us with actions, not words. They engaged us: 'Come with me on this trip.' We did a lot of Amway family events – picnics, Christmas parties. It was a small town; we grew up with employees' kids, went to school together, worked together. Work is fun because it's productive, rewarding, engaging. You feel satisfaction at the end of the day. That's what we carry on. Removing yourself from work loses its richness.

You got sucked in. Yeah, I got sucked in.

I couldn't get out, you know.

But I loved it. My first job in high school was at a surplus store stocking shelves. In college, I interned at the company. I had a great mentor who said: 'If you're going to work at the family business, make a positive decision to want to be there.' I had always wanted to, but he challenged me. I decided I wanted to do it, and that flipped me around. I think that applies to life: don't assume things are handed to you; make a decision.

No, he retired a couple years ago. He's still engaged though. Mitch Daniels – he was pretty awesome. He's from a bygone era of better politics. Tuitions went down under his leadership for 13 years. That's going down in real terms.

For 13 years.

Yeah, absolutely.

Today's Amway has the same principles as where it started. Dad and Jay came out of the Depression and World War II. They started a flight school without knowing how to fly. Then they bought a boat to sail to South America – they didn't know how to sail either. The boat sank. They lost their capital. But they had the idea to get into business. They found Nutrilite, a direct-selling multivitamin company. They became salesmen. Dad and Jay realized if they took the direct-selling concept and gave people an opportunity to build their own sales force, they could create a business. That was their main innovation – multi-level marketing. The name Amway is short for the American way. They believed in free enterprise, and we still do.

Exactly. They did that for a few years, then decided to get a boat and sail to South America for adventure. They read a book about sailing, sold the company, bought a boat – but they didn't know how to sail. They ran aground, got lost, and the boat sank. It was a near-suicide mission.

They were in their early 20s. Their parents loaned them a little. They had a friendship from high school. My father lost his job during the Depression, lost their home. My grandfather told him: 'Get in business for yourself.' They tried different businesses, then found Nutrilite, which was a direct-selling model. They became Nutrilite salesmen. Nutrilite was the world's first multivitamin, developed by Carl Rehnborg. His son Sam still works with us at 90 years old.

Yes, but they recognized they were making money but it wasn't quite their own business. They saw problems with the company. Dad and Jay said: 'If we take the direct-selling concept and give someone an opportunity to have their own business, we can create a system where money follows the work, not the person.' That was the innovation – multi-level marketing. Direct selling means selling without a fixed location – door to door, and now online.

Absolutely. People were home; that's what you did. Dad and Jay created a compensation schedule and a system where you make money from the products you sell and from the sales force you develop. That was their pioneering spirit, and it led to Amway.

Exactly. You earn money in different ways, and the money follows the work. If someone does nothing, they make nothing.

The biggest criticism is that a lot of people aren't successful. We offer the opportunity, but many sign up and aren't successful. Our response is: that's business and life. But we also have to look at ourselves – did we create the right expectations? Give the right training and support? We're always working on that. But if someone doesn't sell or sponsor others, they probably won't be successful. I can't do it for them.