Hey everybody, it is 2025. Yes, we made it back. Do you remember in Y2K when they said the world was going to blow up? Do you remember that? Of course, remember the computers were going to stop, traffic lights were going to work, planes are going to fall out the sky. I was just thinking the other day actually about some of those things. I think the 2000s, the 80s was nuclear war, acid rain — I can't remember what was going to kill us. Who knows, who knows, but here we are, 2025. Exciting New Year. This is podcast powered by Forever, podcast number eight.
Number eight, we made it. Yes, we're heading to ten, we're going to get there. I think that's a safe number. Desiree and the team, we're trying to make us do this monthly. Are you ready? Let's do it.
Oh no, I think we better do a cheers to that one.
Let's do a cheers, because I need some energy. So we got our FAB X today, FAB X active food powered by Forever. This is one of your favorites, huh? For number eight, but going to number ten, right?
Cheers mate, cheers. All the best, love that stuff.
Yeah, I love this drink, and the whole cheers thing is kind of cool too. We talked a little bit about trying to find out what the background is to cheers. I guess we're trying to get a little bit of a movement going with the hashtag Cheers Forever. Is that what it is? #CheersForever. I love it. So hey, when you're enjoying the drink, get with a mate, get with someone you love or don't love, I don't care. Start your meeting with a FAB X or an Aloe Vera Gel or a Berry Nect or whatever your favorite beverage is within Forever, and start your meeting with 'Cheers, here's to Forever.' Love it.
One of the things that did surprise me about this, and I think we've talked about this before talking about product, is how regular FAB outsells FAB X. What do you think, three to one?
Yep. And that still fascinates me.
Yeah, I thought that the sugar-free diet version would outsell, but do you think it's because it's an energy drink?
I think they want the sugar.
Yeah, they want that boost.
No, for sure. Anyway, let's think — how was the end of the year '24?
Oh my gosh, '24 was awesome, wasn't it?
Tell them, yeah. So I do have some numbers here, I wrote them down. It's official now. Obviously we know the sales numbers — we grew by 5.1%, which is just amazing. It was unbelievable. Thanks to all of you. We were hopeful, you know, because it started to turn around in '23. Remember, we sort of had that big sort of move in the right direction in '23, but that momentum just kept flying through '24. That was great. But on top of that was how many markets were up — it was over 70 markets had a positive growth.
So that's brilliant. We still got some issues though, I don't want to run away from those. They're always there. We've got some countries that are still not responding. But we're optimistic.
Couple of regions you still got the stick, right?
Yeah, we had a call with the AVPs this morning. The AVPs, by the way, is our Area Vice President. Shout out to them, man, they had a great year. Worked hard.
Who is that? Peter Boots, Tan, JB, Rams — and who am I missing?
Ilker. Oh, how could I — Ilker Bay, Ilker's on fire this morning. And actually, speaking of Ilker, and I don't think I shared this number with you yet — so Chairman's bonus numbers are in. That's total qualifiers. Total qualifiers, I'm looking at my list here, I don't know if I have the total, but it's over 500. It was over 500 and it was up — it was up around about 70.
That's what I heard the other day. Yeah. Now what's interesting though is Ilker's countries — India, UAE, and Turkey — had the most qualifiers. Go Ilker!
I know, man, it's just incredible. And to see so many more people benefiting from that program is remarkable.
It's amazing. And we'll celebrate that in Paris, so we're very excited.
Oh man, are you going to be there? Come on, you got to come.
We do have seats. Not many. We're looking around at about 8,000 right now and max on the venue is 10,000, so it's getting close. I don't know if we were supposed to say that because Nick might be trying to pretend that it's sold out, but I'm just kidding, he wouldn't do that. But point is, get your tickets now.
Yeah, because for sure, as we know, there's always that uptick around about the month before.
There's some available still. We're excited about that. We got some great things planned. We're going to focus tons on the product. So it's going to be a really, really cool celebration. Another thing we're going to focus on too is the power supervisor, because we're seeing in a lot of these growth markets some really impressive new supervisor numbers based on substantial downline sales. So that's really interesting. So we're not ready to make that announcement yet globally.
No, no, is that at the rally?
Yeah, we're going to do that at the rally.
Hey, come on, that's another reason to be there.
Yeah. And if you do watch the podcast, you get a lot of foreshadowing. Like we announced Dubai, and having another announcement today. We're going to announce some things today on the podcast too. It's the only way we get people to watch. GLT's up — we went from 17 qualifiers in 2024 to 27.
Incredible. That's amazing. That well, that goes right along with the growth. It really does. And maybe a little bit — I don't know, I haven't looked at the numbers — but it feels like we have two people from Burkina Faso. Does anyone know where Burkina Faso is? Find it on a map. So that's brilliant to see that. Couple of re-entries from South Africa. Becky's back, you remember Becky, of course. And a massive one is Percy and Noelle — they came in at 12.5.
Which is amazing. And last year they were in pack 20.
So they went from pack 20 all the way up to 12.5. Coogi, you remember Coogi, Wheels' story — four kids, amazing story. She came to Level Up with us. Was it her son, Success? Yeah. Man, with two CC's — Success! So she answered. There's a couple of great — really excited to see some people sustained it. You know, Jane, Atilla Leno, Philip, two new from Poland — Monica's in, and Simon and Joanna are in.
That's awesome. Yeah, that's great, good for them from Poland.
So it's going to be amazing to work with them. Dana from Japan — someone came in at 10K from Japan.
Mai came in, she must have. So that's amazing to see. And Japan's flying this last year — 11% up.
11%. Number one market for us. What are they — almost 40 years?
They are 40 years. The volume they do at 11% increase — that was huge. Their momentum is off the charts. And obviously being led by the three great groups there. Hanami group's really growing. Kobayashi's group stayed steady, doing well. And Sakai's group, they're still driving it. It's wonderful to see. I'm trying to get anyone else that came. Obviously Ralph and Dominique at number two, looking great.
But Hanami — 65,000 case credits.
Wow, that's even hard to fathom. I mean, we thought 40 was out of this world. Do you remember we were writing that policy and we were like, we better stop at 40.
Straight incredible. Good for her. Congratulations, and she's so lovely, so supportive, for sure. We were in Japan early part of December — I think I talked about it — and just how she's so dedicated to the success of her group. She spent — I know it's on social media, it's not secret — she spent New Year's at Ralph's house.
Oh, I know. We saw that. Cynthia was showing me on Instagram. She said, hey, Hanami is with Ralph in Mallorca.
Good for her. That's awesome.
I spoke with Ralph and Dominique just recently. They were saying Hanami was teaching them how to cook Japanese food for New Year's.
Love it. The community of Forever, right? The culture, it's amazing.
What else we got? So that's 10U, GLT. And if we forgot your name, forgive me. I actually did a bit of a jungle video this morning. I don't know if marketing are going to be too happy, but it was on the board so we just grabbed a camera with Cody and we filmed it. That will go out early because we're pretty excited about it. And not least, what else was great last year? A lot of building changes — we talked about that in the last podcast. So we're going to send out a lot of the details of that. Shout out to Paraguay — I was down there for Christmas, and they just moved into their brand new office building. And it's amazing. We had a grand opening celebration with about 100 FBOs there, and a really cool place launching them into a new sphere.
I was going to say, is it kind of that modern, cool, modern with the big warehouse behind where you get your product?
It's perfect. That's exactly what we're going for. UK will open this year, February 14th. We're going to move into them. That's going to be a really cool one.
Yeah, Hungary — you said you signed the lease on that one. That's a cool building, real cool building.
And we're getting chased now by the country managers that want to move into these new purpose-built ones. Scandinavia, I think they'll be moving in properly in March, because we're out of the big building now. So that's so much change. Wow, so much change going on. And these guys have probably heard we've done some things with the marketing plan. Just some adjustments on that supervisor level. We're watching that. Good change equals growth.
Yes, it does. We're seeing it happen.
Absolutely. And I say good change, because there could be bad change that doesn't, you know. But it's amazing, really. Lots of momentum, tons, tons.
So the question is, if you're not getting momentum in your business, what's going on? This is the time to really get dedicated and committed.
You got to look in the mirror, haven't you? We banged on and we will continue to bang on about that GROWTH acronym. Those attributes — Grit, Taking Responsibility, as in Represent, being Organized, Working hard, working with people in your group Together, and Finding Happiness in what you do. That hasn't changed, and it's not like it was new and we relaunched it. It's been the same since the beginning.
Core principles, yeah. Look in the mirror and find those, you know, it's so important.
And then, I guess it was PAC — barley — when we launched this idea of the pack 20. This President Advisory Council Group, which is the top 20 FBO ships below the GLT that have greater than 200 cases new. And I think Dez told me it was something like the lowest one was in the 50s — 5,200 case credits was the lowest. And that goes right up to I guess 7,499, some unlucky soul. And I want to talk a little bit about that group today. Not only those cases but new growth in their business too, right? How much? 200 new.
200 new. So you could be in between five and 75, but if you don't have that 200, you're not in the pack.
To be honest, we had a few of them — like if I'm being frank with you — but it shows how many people really are growing with new cases. Introducing new people and introducing the correct principles of sharing the product. It's been really cool to see that focus, and we're getting some really good advice and ideas from them.
The pack 20 calls are always full of energy, and they're always asking for new things, pushing new energy, and that's why we love that group.
And we've got 20 people. In fact, let's let them know who qualified. We could do that announcement here just like we did with the Dubai thing. Let's have the area vice presidents help us to announce that. Let's go with Cass over in Japan first.
Awesome. And let's find out who our pack 20 from Japan are.
Thank you very much, Greg and Aidan. And yes, we have a new pack 20 member from Japan, and her name is Mizuo Arita. Wow, congratulations. Okay, back to you.
Thanks a lot, Cass. And again, Cass, you're doing an amazing job with your team over in Japan. Amazing to see how that's coming together. In fact, we were just there, and we were in those meetings — the whole vibe of the place is completely different. And this is first-time pack 20, right? Last year they didn't have anybody, so this is the first person. Great job leading the way. Mizuo — I met her in Hokkaido, which is in the north of Japan, the other day. I sat at her table, had the pleasure of having lunch with her. She's a yoga instructor and meditation instructor. She has kind of a big business doing that.
I don't know if I should share — what I'm about to share with you is not to make anybody feel bad, it's just to give you an idea of the new reality of some of these people. With this online following — I guess hers is more in person — but she's Diamond Manager, first time, 5K qualifier, Level Up qualifier, pack 20. And she joined the business in March.
She joined the business in March and qualified as an eagle manager. And you know, some people might look at Hanami or her downline and say that's unbelievable and they're going to burn out and not be around in a year or two. How many of those have we seen? How long has she been working? Like seriously, she's been in the business what, 10 or 11 years?
Probably bang on now, 11 years. And she's gone from breaking records to breaking more records. She's not going anywhere.
Well, let's learn from her, right? Her dedication to community — she truly builds a community. And it isn't — I'm not being judgmental, you build your business wherever you want to — but hers is a business community. They work very closely together on supporting each other to be successful in their businesses.
And to be honest, a lot of it is based around the product. They love the product. This lady in Hokkaido, she just loves the product, and she uses that as part of her — it supports her other business activities.
A leader a day. Absolutely. That's what a lot of them did at the very least.
So congratulations. We can't spend too much time on this, these guys will be getting bored. Africa — Africa grew 27% last year.
Incredible. Africa, for them.
You know, West Africa is on fire. We don't hear much about Senegal, but they're still doing great.
Ivory Coast, boom. Burkina Faso is doing amazing. South Africa is really responding.
Tanzania, growing. Nigeria is still struggling a bit, but Daniel is doing his best there. I know they've got so many problems with their exchange rate right now, it's just murder.
But we do have some new pack 20 and some returning pack 20. So let's ask JB. JB, who have you got?
Thank you, Aidan and Greg. The names from Africa: Isaka Wango from Burkina Faso, Siviwe from South Africa, TOA Kings Lianga from South Africa, and Dumiso Mai from South Africa. Congratulations.
Thanks, JB. So how many was that, Greg? One, two, three, four — four African pack 20. And don't forget, we've got gosh, five, four or five in the GLT.
Wow, isn't that amazing. They're rocking.
They really are. And South Africa is On, you know, On is doing great down there and leading that. Good to see. Speaking of South Africa, great to see To beke back. To beke is in the GLT. It's a very good example of leadership, right?
Yeah. Good, great leadership can take you a long ways.
Yeah, same in your business, right? As an FBO, one of the things that On's brilliant at is recognizing people. She recognizes people. She created a stable environment. And these great leaders — Noelle, Percy, To beke, Becky to a degree. Oh, you know who else is doing — Selena, doing amazing. His business on fire, responding to On's changes and seeing their businesses come back alive is just wonderful.
It's incredible. Yeah, it really is.
It's incredible. And Buoy — let me get her name — Buoy Sewa. She spoke when we were down there. I believe this is the lady, and it was an amazing story. She has an autistic child, and that was her motivation to get involved in Forever, because the child needed so much care and help.
