So Dr. Joe was appointed as Chief Scientific Officer and Executive Vice President of Product Development in the year 2006. So with more than 35 years of experience in the pharmaceutical and dietary supplement industry, Dr. Joe has comprehensive knowledge in both sectors. So I believe that you'll be excited to hear his expert insight on ageLOC technology in today's sessions. So once again, please help me to invite Dr. Joe. So thank you, Dr. Joe, we are very pleased to have you join us today. And please, it's great, yeah, so we can't wait to hear from you later on. Please do share a lot of the ageLOC story with us, okay? And up next, we have Junan, our sales leader from Singapore. So Junan is here with us today to share his business journey with Nu Skin and how ageLOC has transformed his life and grown his business. So apart from that, we will also be hearing from Junan to share why he is so dedicated to empowering and mentoring more leaders to be successful in Nu Skin. So Junan, do you have a few words to say to the audience?
First, thank you Nu Skin for giving me this honor and privilege to share with all of you. I look forward to telling you some of our stories and also hearing as always.
Yeah, thank you, Junan. So leaders, do you know over the past 16 years since the first ageLOC product was introduced, ageLOC has celebrated the $10 billion brand in global cumulative sales in 2020? And this is really an amazing achievement, and this could not be possible without all the scientists' efforts as well as our sales leaders' advocacy for this ageLOC brand. So throughout these years, we have more than millions of loyal ageLOC users who love our products and our comprehensive portfolio under the ageLOC brand. So we all know the power of ageLOC technology. However, did you ever wonder how did the idea of creating this technology come about and become the brand we know and love by many? And today we are going to ask these questions to Dr. Joe because he is the best person to tell us more on this. So Dr. Joe, could you please share with us how did the idea of creating this ageLOC technology come about?
Yeah, thanks, Fon. It's always great to be on such calls and sort of really help everybody to understand what ageLOC is all about. I'm assuming my voice is okay, right? It's coming through and everybody's hearing it, and hopefully I won't speak too fast because there's some translation happening at the same time as well. So as I was saying, you know, ageLOC fundamentally, when you look at it, and you don't even have to be a scientist and all that, the main objective of ageLOC is to help everybody to live younger and better longer. And that's an important phrase because I didn't say to help you live longer, but it's actually help you to live younger and better longer. Which that means is the fact that what ageLOC is all about is to improve and to preserve at the very minimum your quality of life. Okay? And I think everybody at this call could realize that as well because what's the point of living, you know, over 100 years old and you don't live it in a good way? You know, you either be sitting in a wheelchair, you can't get out of bed, you can't do all the things that you want to do, and that's really not a good quality of life. So and therefore, ageLOC is all about that. At the end of the day, all the science that we do, all the scientific discoveries that we have, and all that, they're all pointing towards that particular objective. And really on a personal level, you can say, well, how did it all begin? You know, what is the origin of ageLOC? And frankly, the origin I can take it back to my parents because both my parents have passed away now. But when they were alive, whenever I visited with them and chatted with them and so on, my two parents gave me a lot of... it sort of began to make me ask a lot of questions about aging. And the reason is because my mother, she passed away at about age of 90, but she passed away in a very good way, the way I look at it, because all she did was to close her eyes and never woke up. You know, and up to that point, her quality of life was really good. I mean, she just goes around, I mean, she does everything on her own. She doesn't need any help from anybody to do the things that she wanted to do. And for all intents and purposes, I always get a chuckle out of this, and that is that she still thinks, or she still thought when she was alive, that she treats me like a 9-year-old. And that shows me her mind was still very active when she was alive, and she was really able to think of all sorts of things and doesn't really lose her memory. So she had a good death, ultimately, that's what I'm saying, at the age of 90. However, by contrast, when I look at my dad, and he also passed away roughly around 80, 85, passed away before my mom, but he never had a good quality of life. He was in a wheelchair. In fact, it came to a point where he couldn't even shave himself. And if you're a man and sort of listening on this call, you would appreciate, I mean, one of the things that we do as guys is that we like to shave, right? And we would like to shave our face with our own hands. So for a man who is not able to do shaving on his own, there's a lot of loss of self-respect. And that's what my dad had become. His quality of life was really not very good, all right? And it continued for five to six years before he actually died. So I have these two parents of mine, and it came to a question I asked myself: what? Because genetically we are all the same, okay? We share the same genes. There are about 25,000 of them, and we all have the same genes in our body. Collectively, we call it a human genome. So why is it my mom, with the same human genome, has a great quality of life, and my dad never did have a good quality of life with the same human genome? And that's what led us, the team, and everybody else in Pharmanex. Obviously, this was not a one-man show, if you will. It's a collection of all the scientists that we have, around 70, 75 scientists in Nu Skin. We started to ask that question. You see, what could explain that? At that point in time, and this is like Fon already alluded to it, about 16 years ago, many of us, including Nu Skin, we sort of really, frankly, when we look at our products and how we develop them, we develop them by just covering up the symptoms or the signs of aging. All right? We, in a way, the English language has used the word cosmetic to define something superficial. You know, it's a cosmetic cover-up, so to speak, and because we don't know any better then. However, with the advent of ageLOC, and this was the discovery that we have together with some other professors at the University of Wisconsin, a company that they founded called LifeGen, which we subsequently bought, they discovered there are certain genes in the body that are really responsible for aging inside the body, including the skin as well. All right? They are the ones that we call them youth gene clusters. These groups of genes seem to be able to influence how a particular organ or tissue ages. Okay? The lung has a special set of clusters of genes, the heart has another group of genes, and so some of the genes overlap, but they do show differences. And these professors told us at that time, 16 years ago, that look, you know, rather than just looking at symptoms and signs of aging, we really believe that these genes are the source of aging in the body. This is the beginning of the aging process. That was a very insightful observation because now we can go all the way back upstream to the first step of the aging process. So think about it, right? You don't have to be a scientist to really see how impactful this discovery is because if you can go further up, like a waterfall, if you can stop the waterfall at the top of the waterfall, the water won't flow down. You try stopping the water at the bottom of the waterfall, it's way more difficult and it's way less effective, right? That's a good analogy to think about ageLOC. So we are going back up in the aging process all the way to the origin, actually, and be able to influence that. So this is a proprietary discovery. It's a very important discovery by the professors because, you know, most of our competitors are still wondering where are the genes that they're looking at. They don't really know. Whereas our proprietary knowledge and the asset, the intellectual property that we actually acquired from LifeGen, allows us to identify the specific genes responsible for aging in a particular tissue. So we have used that and developed a lot of products. I mean, over the last 16 years, we use ageLOC technology to sort of really discover first Vitality, R-Square, and then ultimately we brought out Y-Span, you know, about six years ago or something. And we can talk about Y-Span a little bit more, but that's really, in a way, our most advanced anti-aging supplement that we have ever developed, right? So this diagram that Fon put up on source of aging, that's what I have been talking about. You go to the source, you have a much better chance of getting a much better product with ageLOC technology. Other companies are still doing it the old way. You know, it's almost like using a landline phone versus a mobile phone. You know, I mean, who uses a landline phone anymore? In fact, you walk around Singapore or any other big cities around Southeast Asia, I don't think you find any more telephone kiosks anymore. Even in London, you know, those red boxes, they've all disappeared. They don't have any phones anymore. Everybody has a mobile phone. And I think that's what we have done with ageLOC is essentially disrupt the aging industry and be able to really come out with a breakthrough that is unique and really is going to change how we look at aging going forward and how we can influence it with products, both in terms of skincare products and also the nutritional supplements that we develop through ageLOC technology. So the next question is, okay, what is ageLOC technology? And I think just briefly, it's about this technology uses what we call a biochip. And we can culture these kind of biochips. There might be a slide coming up that essentially, we can use that biochip to screen and identify these kinds of... that's the biochip you can see there. And on the right, that's a picture of all DNA or genes that we can light up and be able to look at in terms of how bright they are or how dark they are, how active that gene is in every tissue in the body. So that's the technology, for all intents and purposes, that we use in ageLOC technology that we use to develop ageLOC products. So it's pretty exciting. And maybe you have a next slide, maybe we can talk about... I don't know how we do... yeah, okay. So with that technology, we sort of can actually come up with this kind of pictures or what we call genetic fingerprints, right? So the one on the left is young. That's about 100, 300 genes or so, and each color shows the activity of a particular gene. All right? So and that's a profile. It's like a fingerprint. I mean, police be all around the world, you cannot really catch a criminal without his fingerprint, right? Much easier. So this is our genetic fingerprint. We want a young one that looks like the left, and then the old one, which I don't think we go backwards anyway, the old one is the opposite. All the colors change. The green becomes red, the red becomes green, and so it's totally different from what a healthy piece of tissue looks like. So we use this, and we have this fingerprint now. So what we use and do is, we have lots of ingredients, right? These are natural product ingredients, traditional Chinese herbs, Ayurvedic type of herbs, European herbs, all kinds of natural products. So we extract or make an extract out of these kind of natural products, and we put it onto the tissue, an old piece of tissue, and see whether that particular ingredient or several ingredients can change the pattern, the genetic pattern or profile, back to the one that we get from the young tissue. All right? If you click it, maybe we can... oh, okay, you already clicked it. That ingredient four, I've just put here examples of five of them, and ingredient four is the one that you can see it almost duplicated the genetic profile of a young tissue. So simply put, that's how we do and how we use ageLOC technology. Very powerful. But if you don't have the fingerprint, you can't really do it, right? So and many of our competitors, if not most of them, they don't have this fingerprint. So they can use the technology, or they can use this biochip. They can actually buy it. We didn't invent the biochip, but what are they looking at? Because they don't have the fingerprint to compare to. So that's our secret source, if you will, in ageLOC. And it has served us very well. You know, Fon has already mentioned to you that by 2020, cumulatively, we have already sold more than $10 billion worth of ageLOC products. It has since exceeded that now. It's 2024 and still continues to grow and continues to help us develop new ageLOC products. So yeah, it's about targeting of the genes and how we can influence it. It's a technology that we have, and only Nu Skin has it.
Very impressive, Dr. Joe. I still remember that when I joined Nu Skin as a product trainer, ageLOC is like, you know, my first chapter to learn in Nu Skin that I have to actually learn what is gene, what is gene expressions, what is the technology of our ageLOC, so that I can actually communicate and convey this great, wonderful technology to our sales leaders. So it was very, very impressive. That was not the things that I actually learned in my university course. Thank you so much.
It's great, yeah. And I'm hoping that people, you know, oh my goodness, we are over a thousand people listening and looking at this, participating here. So that's great. Welcome everybody. And hopefully my explanation gives some insight and some understanding of ageLOC because, you know, it continues to be an incredible platform for us and for you to use to drive your business and opportunity.
So leaders, the next question that I'm going to ask Dr. Joe, I think is very important for you because just now Dr. Joe shared a lot of background and story with us. So get ready with your notebook and pen and listen attentively. I'm going to ask Dr. Joe these questions because Dr. Joe, you know, we are not scientists, so I believe our leaders out there would like to actually listen from you how could you just, you know, explain what is actually about in the most simplest form, simplify it so that they can duplicate it when they actually talk to their customers.
Yeah, you know, there's one thing, right? When you... I think you're asking me if you get into a lift in Southeast Asia, I guess in the US we call it the elevator, and the door closes and there's somebody standing next to you and say, 'Oh, what's this ageLOC I hear about in Nu Skin?' and so on and so forth. What's it all about? I mean, my answer to them is, well, this is really, at the end of the day, Nu Skin has developed products that can help you live longer, better. Okay? Yeah, that's really, I mean, less than 10 seconds you would have described. And how they do it is through ageLOC. And then the door opens and you can say, 'Are you interested?' I mean, we can provide you. And that's the difference with Nu Skin is that it's just not all talk. You know, I think you can come and listen, and we are a science company and we have a lot of scientific evidence to prove that ageLOC works. You see? So and that's the difference, I guess, in Nu Skin, how you would describe Nu Skin in that sense, right? Because here's the thing, I mean, it's also Nu Skin is also a business opportunity, if you will. And the reason why we have all these products and why we want to make sure that they give meaningful benefits is that Nu Skin wants to give you a sustainable business opportunity and not a flash in the pan. It's not something that you can go out and just do it one time and you can never repeat it. You know, it is supposed to be something that you can use Nu Skin to grow your business and to be successful and so on. And then it's recurring. You know, it doesn't disappear. And that's why we want to make sure that our products, I mean, at the end of the day, if the products don't work, there is no business opportunity, fundamentally, right? And also, the products also is to make sure that even if somebody is not interested, frankly, to join you or whatever as a business opportunity, that person will become a customer. Our products will never ever embarrass you. And that's another important, you know, another objective for us in Nu Skin is that personally, I want to make sure the products that come out at the end of the day, when I see each and every one of you, is to make sure that I can look you straight in the eye and not be able to say, 'Well, yeah, yeah, they're all talk, talk, talk and no action,' so to speak. You know, this is real benefits for real people.
Yeah, that's why we always see Dr. Joe so confident when Dr. Joe talks about the technology and ageLOC products to us. So thank you, Dr. Joe, for your great sharing. So I'm going to turn to Fon to share about the business opportunity of ageLOC. So Dr. Joe, you may take a rest. I'll come back to you later on.
So leaders, as Dr. Joe shared, right, we basically uncover the opportunity to develop innovative products that actually target the source of aging, not just the signs and symptoms. So I think this is very important for us to know, and this is indeed a revolution and game changer, right? And like Dr. Joe mentioned, not many companies can achieve these type of standards. So we are the company not just creating a new innovative product with proven results, like Dr. Joe shared with us, but at the same time we also help to present a great opportunity for business as well. So I think as sales leaders, right, you are a part of Nu Skin, and this product and technology are really, really exclusive for you to use. And with amazing technology, it comes to the great business opportunities. So thanks, Junan, for taking your time to join us for today. So as many of you may know, right, Junan was a former Singapore government scholar, and he previously served as a Deputy Director in the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Trade and Industry. So his journey with Nu Skin began like many of us when he was first introduced to the ageLOC products and of course other Nu Skin products and the business opportunity that Nu Skin offers. So Junan, we want to actually get some insights from you as one of the successful leaders, right, on why you actually decided to take the leap of faith to join Nu Skin.
Thank you. Thank you. Firstly, I want to applaud Nu Skin for having this seminar about rediscovering ageLOC. I think it's so important. Maybe some of the new people have forgotten about ageLOC or maybe a little bit in the background because ageLOC is very, very powerful. So my own story goes like this. I was invited at that time by an American guy called Bob How, my direct sponsor. He was, during our time in finance, one of the biggest fund managers for Southeast Asia. So obviously, when he invited my wife and I to attend a presentation on Nu Skin, I didn't know that it was a multi-level marketing company. I only knew it's got some form of direct selling and it's got very good products. But I'm always open to opportunity. So I attended a one-hour presentation, and very shortly, even before the presentation ended, my wife and I could already make a few key conclusions about Nu Skin. Number one, that Nu Skin was clearly the leading company in the anti-aging space and in the MLM space because I looked at the founders' vision, I looked at their energy, and of course, I saw the stellar scientific team headed by the likes of Dr. Joe Chang. And also, very importantly, we were already doing so well in South Korea and in Japan. Now, these two markets, the women and the men know more about skincare, more about wellness than anywhere else in the world. So if you can succeed so well in those markets without advertising, without multiple retail outlets, without endorsement from film stars or sports stars, you must be doing something very right. So point number one, we were already clearly the leading company in the anti-aging space. Point number two, I saw that Nu Skin was able to attract a lot of professionals, a lot of entrepreneurs, and even men to do this business. So clearly, this was not just some small business, but a business that is big enough. And the fact that professionals and entrepreneurs, doctors, PhD holders could come in to embrace the business and eventually do it full-time told me everything I needed to know about the integrity, the credibility of the company, how the products were, and most importantly, the financial rewards must be more than sufficient for them to eventually do it full-time after starting part-time. And third and lastly, I saw there was no downside to doing this business, only upside. Now, I think all of us want to do something with no downside, only upside. What do I mean? Firstly, unlike a traditional business, even a small one, you have to put in a lot of capital, you have to shoulder overheads like manpower, like inventory, like rentals. There was none of that. And it's up to you how hard you want to work to enroll other people, and your business can grow not just in Singapore but across the region and the world. So to me, it was very clear this was clearly for me and my wife a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that we did not expect. The last thing we expected to be doing was to do something involving skincare supplements and multi-level marketing. But there we are. We were open to opportunities, and we were lucky to be shown Nu Skin.
Thank you, Junan. Very inspirational. I like what you shared because, like you mentioned, Nu Skin is really the leading company. And in fact, right, Nu Skin actually offers limitless opportunity to all our leaders out there with the ageLOC technology as well. So I believe our leaders here, after listening to you, right, they can feel, you know, to refresh back why they actually joined Nu Skin at the very beginning and why they still continue with this business. So Junan, I have my next question to you. So when ageLOC was first introduced back in the year 2008, right, what potential did you actually see in this cutting-edge technology? Why did it stand out to you? Could you please share more with us?
Okay, so when I first heard about ageLOC, my first reaction was, 'Wow, you mean we could actually do this?' Because most of us assume that we are hostage to our genes. We are going to live the way our parents live and our grandparents live, and we cannot change our fate. Okay? We cannot change our fate. But what ageLOC presented was we could, as Dr. Joe Chang said, not just treat the symptoms of aging but tackle the actual source of aging. I really like that. Okay? To me, today, even then, when you Google gene expression, epigenetics, everything comes out that this is truly the forefront of anti-aging. Most of the billionaires in the world and multi-billionaires are looking for such a solution for themselves or to do a business. And yet this opportunity is open to ordinary people like us. So first, I really like the concept of anti-aging, but in a way that tackles the source of aging, not just the symptoms. And once we actually saw the testimonials of how this works, it's not what we say but what we do, and it actually works. Like what Dr. Joe Chang was saying, you don't just come out a concept and then nothing works. You know, just like saying today, if you say Ferrari, or you say Rolex, or you say Chanel, you immediately identify with the brand, whether or not you're actually using it, that it's the best in its class. So hopefully, with all our hard work, when in the future we keep saying ageLOC, even to someone who has not yet used a thing, they will say, 'Oh yes, I hear it's good for really turning back the clock.' So I hope that we can become that kind of brand and that company.
Yes, thank you, Junan. I guess your sharing is to show a proof that, you know, ageLOC technology really gives us a competitive edge as compared to the others from the field. And this ageLOC technology really put us as the leaders in the anti-aging field. So how do you actually leverage the power of ageLOC to build your business and your organization?
Okay, so for me, I think there are a few key points. Number one, the fact that the ageLOC products actually work really helps to build trust, loyalty to the brand, and confidence in our business builders. Like I say, you can only market a concept for so long, but if the products don't work, people will get tired of it and say it's a scam. So firstly, when we see that the products actually work, it becomes very powerful for us to then talk about the business. Secondly, all business today, MLM or otherwise, is about marketing a very powerful brand and what that brand stands for. Now, in the case of ageLOC, I really like the brand because often when we market Nu Skin at multi-level marketing, some people may not react the way we want them to react. Okay? They have...
Certain biases in the beauty business, but if you were to market the ageLOC brand right at the beginning as one which tackles the sources of aging and not just the symptoms, and the person marketing it is a living testimonial of that concept and that brand, then people will say, 'Oh really? For your age, you really look good. So tell me more.' You know, like what Dr. Joe Chang was about, the elevator pitch: live longer, better. And finally, our sixth generation ageLOC compound is a very powerful tool for us to scale the business. And again, today, all business is about scaling. So I want to just share a little story. I just came back from a cruise with my wife last night. We just came back, and I slept like a baby until this morning 7:30. And during the cruise, I noticed a number of things. The people who could afford to go on the cruise, they may have the money, they may have the time, but they don't necessarily have the youth and health. I saw so many people walking not so well on motorized wheelchairs. And in fact, I was the only one running on the ship. And I happened to run into a person I knew, and he came up to me, Singapore, and he said, 'Hey, what have you been doing? You know, I haven't seen you for years. You know, my wife wants to know the secret for you and your wife.' You know, then he found out that I'm actually younger than him, and he said, 'My wife is giving me a hard time. You better tell me more about all these ageLOC supplements and your Life stuff.' So it actually worked. And in fact, when we were visiting some of the museums in Europe, they have a senior discount for 65 and above. Both my wife and I are 65 this year. When we say, 'Two tickets, senior, please,' they say, 'Ah, show me your passport photos.' I have to show them. Normally people just go through, right? They look at it again and say, 'Okay, okay, you can go.' So you have to be a living testimonial of the product to sell the product, and better still, to sell the brand and the business.
