Hello, it's Aaron and welcome back to the podcast. My guest today is Doug Devos. He's the co-chair of Amway where he was previously president for over 16 years. He's also the son of Amway co-founder Rich DeVos, which normally I don't talk about whose people's parents are because it's not relevant, but it's actually very relevant to our conversation because we're going to be talking about his dad's book, Believe, originally published in 1975, in which Doug is shepherding a re-release on its 50th anniversary, which is this year. And there is a link to buy it in the show notes. So, be sure to check that out. Doug, thank you so much for joining me.
Erin, it's great to be here. Great to connect again and to chat with you.
Well, thank you. The book is called Believe.
Exclamation point. Believe exclamation point. What are we supposed to believe in? [laughter] Well, dad wrote the book and it was really an articulation of what he believed. But the challenge of the book is to ask you what you believe in. So he talked about what he believed and why he believed it, why he felt it was important, why he felt that those beliefs helped him and how he saw those beliefs also play out in society and help others in society when they kind of shared or applied those beliefs. But the real question that I try to pose a lot of time is in a discussion to ask somebody, what do you believe? Now, I'm happy to tell you what I believe and I'm happy to share those sorts of things and to walk through that. And I think everybody should do that, but it's great to ask for that in response. And dad always did a great job of expressing what he believed, feeling strongly about it, but then leaving room for somebody else to disagree with him or believe something else and they could build a relationship anyway. It wasn't a litmus test, but what he wanted to do is just articulate those things that were important to him, share them with others, and then encourage people to kind of have that own discussion with themselves about where they stand and why they stand there. And so in actuality, what they believe.
I think maybe it's the very first chapter in the book, he really tries to get people to believe in themselves. And he's got this line. And he says, 'I believe that one of the most powerful forces in the world is the will of a man who believes in himself, who dares to aim high, to go confidently after the things he wants in life.' And I gather that encouragement was sort of a theme of his work.
Absolutely. And that's what I grew up in. That was the environment I grew up in. And that's why I wanted to re-release the book and kind of doing it on behalf of my siblings because these are the things that impacted our family so powerfully that he would say he went around the world just to telling people you can do it. You can do it. You know, so many people if they make a mistake or something goes wrong or whatever the case may be, they fail at something, they think they're a failure. And his life and what we've tried to emulate in our lives with other people is to say, 'You can do it for our kids. You can do it. Don't be afraid. Take that step. And if you fail, you're not a failure. You can recover. You can learn. You can improve. Do it again, do something new, move forward, but don't ever be stuck.' And that was just who he was. And it was important to people. So many people would continue throughout his life to come up and thank him because that bit of encouragement was really important to them.
Yeah. He also says for the individual in that position, there is only one thing left after all the arguments are weighed and all the costs are measured. Do it. [laughter] Try it. Quit talking about it and do it. And I thought that was interesting because he doesn't actually tell you what to do. You know, it's sort of whatever you want to do, but this idea that you just sometimes you just have to go for it. You don't hear a lot of that today.
Well, that's exactly how he lived. That's what he and his business partner Jay Van Andel, the co-founder of Amway, he and Jay, from young ages, they grew up in the depression, so they dealt with hardships and that challenge. They grew up in World War II. They both served and but they came out of that experience with this optimism and this frustration when people would say or talk a lot about something but not actually do it. So, dad had a great speech that he would give. He called try or cry. You know, quit crying about it. Go out and try. Pick one or the other. But the just the act of trying something. You're going to learn. You're going to put yourself out there. Do that sense of adventure. So, the first business he and Jay started after World War II was a flight school. And it's important to say that because neither one of them knew how to fly, but they knew they wanted to be in business together. And they did that for a few years. Then they read a book about sailing in the Caribbean. So they wanted to sail to South America. So they sold that business, bought a boat, and they were going to sail to South America. But neither one of them knew how to sail. Now they made it far enough. They made it down the East Coast. They got lost a lot. They ran aground a lot. They had a lot of problems with the boat. It leaked a lot until it finally gave up and the boat sank off the north coast of Cuba. So they sank. They were rescued. They continued on with their trip. But that spirit of venture, that idea that if you have something that's important to you, if you want to try that business, that job, that education, that next experience, if you want to improve yourself in some way, help somebody else, reach out, build a relationship and a friendship, do it. It may not always be successful, but you're going to learn and you're going to be better for it.
Today, it seems like everybody's lives are overscripted. You know, you're born and they hand you here's what you got to do. You got to get into the right kindergarten so you can get into the right schools and then you can take your AP classes and go to the right college and get your job at McKinsey. And those are all good things. I went to college and all that, but it seems like there's not a lot of room for people who want to go off script today and just do something that's like a dream of theirs.
Sure. But aren't the most interesting people you meet those that have gone off script, those that have done something silly, or dramatic and good. Some of the best stories I have are the mistakes that I've made, the silly things that I've done. In my role at Amway, I ended up in so many situations where I would look around and I go, 'What am I doing here? I am not prepared for this. I'm not ready for this. I don't know if it's going to be successful or not. But here I am in this forum giving this speech with this group of people, with this level of engagement, whatever that may be.' And every time, whether it went really well or whether I made mistakes and it didn't go as well, I learned something and I grew. And that's the adventure. Then you have fun stories to talk about that you can continue to learn or others can learn from. And it's those adventures that if you never took it, you'd never learn that lesson. If you never took that risk, you'd never learn the lesson, you'd never have that experience. You could never share it with somebody else. You could never use it to grow. And so sometimes, especially in today's world, the script isn't working out. The world of work, the future is very much an unknown. And those of us who are going to be a little bit more adventurous, a little more unscripted, a little more willing to take risk, are more willing to challenge themselves and learn and go forward with that sense of adventure, are probably going to have an opportunity to be a little bit more successful.
Your dad was also an incredible believer in America in a very, it's kind of retro. He was very earnest about loving the country. There was none of the irony or the cynicism that you hear so much of today. Here's his quote. He says, 'I believe in America in a time when flag waving is discouraged. I don't apologize at all for an old-fashioned hand-over-heart emotional brand of patriotism. I believe that America is the greatest country in the world with the richest patch, the brightest future, and the most exciting presence of any nation anywhere.' Now, this was written in the 70s when a lot of people would not have said that. Remarkable belief in the country.
You know, and you would say some of those conditions in the 70s might be present today. And the idea of just being proud to be an American and being proud of our country and understanding we're not perfect. I love the way it's said in the preamble of the Constitution, in order to be a more perfect union, we've fallen. We've made mistakes. We haven't lived up to the ideals that we put into the Declaration of Independence. We haven't lived up to that as well as we could, but we're not done yet. And when you look at our track record, we've done pretty well compared to the rest of the world. America has been a light. America has had a level of success that's been unheard of before in history. And therefore, we have a role and we have a responsibility as citizens to believe in our country, to do what we can to make it better, and to celebrate whether it's the 4th of July or Labor Day or Memorial Day or Veterans Day or whatever it may be that we celebrate our country and we're thankful for it, and not to the detriment of other countries or to try to say we're better, but just to say we're pretty darn good. It can get better yet. Let's challenge ourselves. Let's think about that. That time after World War II was this wonderful time of patriotism and excitement and optimism for the future. Wouldn't it be great if we could find that again without having to go through a world war? Wouldn't it be great if we could just look inside of ourselves and say, 'Look, there's some really rich content in this country and there's some really big mistakes we've made in this country. Let's gravitate towards the richness and the positives and let's build on those so we can move through and get past the mistakes that we've made and we can be as a country just like a lot of us are in life. We make mistakes, we move forward.'
Well, your dad was obviously an optimist. So much in the book, he's encouraging you to think about the positives and sort of don't dwell on the negatives. And so many people today are kind of negative nancies. I mean, I probably fall a little bit into that. I'm always looking at the data that shows this is bad, this is bad, this is bad. How do you stay positive in a world with so many crazy things happening?
Sure. Well, first of all, it's not bad to take stock realistically and see what's going wrong. That's why every sports team looks at game films, right? What did we do right? What did we do wrong? How do we learn from it? But he always chose to say that we're going to build on it and we're going to go forward. And it's a choice. And even in difficult times, you've got to challenge yourself to say what am I going to choose? Am I going to choose to take this situation, this challenge, this failure that I may have had and learn from it and move forward, or will I get so stuck in the negative aspects that I'll be stuck myself and I won't be able to move on. And so dad always would move forward. Whatever it was, we're going to go forward. We're going to get better. And that's what his father said to him in the depression. He talked about my grandfather when he lost his job, when he lost their home, the family lost their home. He would say, 'It's going to get better. We're going to get through this. I'm going to get my job back. We're going to get our home back. We're going to get through this.' And so, Dad always talked about that idea of moving through a tough time and not being stuck.
What made you decide to reissue the book?
Well, because you as you articulated, Aaron, you're kind of looking at things in the world today and it's discouraging. It could be negative. It would be easy to be stuck or feel stuck. But as we grew up in that environment that mom and dad created for us, or that we lived and experienced in Amway, you go back a lot to the foundations, to the principles that were used in the beginning. And as I read the book again, as we talked about what dad stood for, I said my goodness, all these things are relevant today. There are a few examples that I go, okay, that may be 50 years old, but the principles are the same. Persistence doesn't go out of style. Accountability doesn't go out of style. Believing in God doesn't go out of style. Although, as you articulate, we may be living in a negative world right now, but it doesn't go out of style. These are timeless truths. The family, free enterprise. These are truths that we've seen play out over time. And so, let's reintroduce them. Let's use the book and these ideas as a chance to rediscover them, reapply them, and renew our energy towards living out those principles.
There's a forward in the book by Steve Van Andel who is the son of Jay Van Andel. Now your dad and Jay Van Andel were not just business partners. They were best friends going back to like at least their high school days.
And exactly. But just because the dads were friends doesn't necessarily mean the sons are going to be friends. What does it mean to have him say such nice things about your father in the book?
Well, it's a couple things. One, Dad and Jay were so close and they worked so closely. Our families were neighbors. We grew up next to each other. And so, our family and the Van Andel family, it's like we were one, like we're still all siblings, but the relationship that I've had with the Van Andel family and especially with Steve has been incredibly special. Steve and I were partners. We, as we worked together at Amway, Steve was the chairman, I was the president. We together kind of served as the co-CEO, we could kind of finish each other's sentences. We built a level of trust and as families, we keep working on that and developing that. We started with that foundation, but it really means a lot that Steve was able to beautifully articulate how he felt about dad, how he felt about these principles and the same ways we would talk about Jay, too. It's just a wonderful relationship and partnership that really has spanned generations. And we trust it will continue on in our families for generations into the future. We work on it. We spend time together. We talk about these things. The business holds us together. And it's just very special to see it come through like that. Steve did a great job.
