A Special Interview with Dr. Joe Chang

You can call me.

Yes, we're all family here, right?

Thank you. Yes. You know, since you asked me the question whether you should call me Joe, you should stick with Joe because nobody uses my full name, Joseph. Only my mother does that. And when she calls me Joseph, I know I'm in trouble.

My heart is always in Malaysia. Look at everybody here. It's amazing to be here and watching all the wonderful talent. Thank you.

Well it's an interesting story because my life is a series of accidents. I have never planned for it. And as you hinted, my first job when I finished university was in the drug industry and I developed drugs for big drug companies for what, 15 years or so. And it became clear to me that there is another way to help people to stay healthy instead of developing drugs. I thought it is much better to prevent diseases rather than treating diseases. So drugs are really meant to treat diseases after they have happened in your body. Whereas if I started a company that can develop products that can prevent diseases and sort of slow down the aging process in the body, it would be a much better thing. I thought it would be way more effective to help people to live better longer.

Absolutely. Until your last breath. Remember, Pharmanex and skincare products, they're really meant to do two things. The Pharmanex products are helping you to die healthy. I hope the translators can do that. And our Nu Skin products is to help you to die pretty.

No, that's what it's all about. So one day since we all will die, when people come to your funeral they are all going to look at your body and say I want to look like that person.

Yes, it is very personal for me, this ageLOC technology, because when I first started to think about how to keep people young, it was very personal because it's about the history of my family, especially my parents. And let me perhaps show you a first picture if you have the first picture.

That's my father. I think he's about 40, 45 or thereabouts. And you can see from his face he's very healthy. He's happy. And you feel that he's full of life like many of you sitting here. That's what struck me about my father because I feel that before his illness everybody should look like him because that's what health is all about. Let me show you a second picture of him. That's my father almost 40 years later and around 70 he started to get sick and you can tell from this picture that he is not having a very good quality of life. This is a very important picture for me because you noticed in this photograph that somebody had to help him to shave. Now, for a man, for every man sitting here, this is one of the things that we do every day. And to have somebody to help you to shave, that's not good. That's really bad because it almost takes away my father's self-respect. I'm so sick that I can't even shave myself. And that's what I mean by quality of life. It's not about living very long, but being able to live as long as you can, but be able to do everything that you can. My father couldn't do it. This is very sad for me because a year later he died but to me his death was actually a blessing in disguise because he didn't have to suffer anymore. You know he's passed on. He's sort of happy because now he doesn't have to suffer. So that's to me personally an illustration of an aging process. Let me show you a second picture. There's my mother about the same age as my father. I think about two years younger. So that's about 40. Let me show you the second picture. That's my mother. Now, when you look at my mother, she looks very different, right, from my father. You can see that she's happy in spite of the fact that she's over 80 now, close to 85. She has a twinkle in her eye and she's healthy. That should happen to everybody. When you get older, you should look pretty close to my mom because that's what I wish for everybody. And that's another aspect of aging. Right now in this aging process, my mother aged very well. In fact, she aged so well that when I go visit her in about two or three days time, I know what she's going to say to me because her brain is still active. And the first question she will ask me, 'What took you so long to come and visit me?' Mothers don't change. Mothers always consider their children to be always 9 years old. No matter how old you are, they can still teach you what to do. Correct? So that's my mother and that was my father. I think I've got another picture. That's my mother-in-law. That's my wife's mother. She looks really beautiful. She looks really good. Okay, if you click on one more time, that's what she looks like. She was more than 83 or thereabouts when she died. But she died that way. Okay. In other words, she died healthy. She died very differently from my father. In fact, she passed away at approximately just about a year after my father died. So I've shown you three of my parents and I asked the question when I see this, my question is why is it that each of this person aged differently? My father didn't age well, he got sick. My mother who is still alive, she's aging well. And my mother-in-law also aged well and in fact when she died, she did not die from any illness. She literally when she died, she died in my wife's arms while talking to my wife and she just closed her eyes and she's gone. So, and that's what started me to think about ageLOC. That is the beginning of ageLOC. It's a passion for me because I know every one of us can be like my mother-in-law or my mother. All right? So, I have to find out the scientific reason for why there are these differences. And that's the beginning of ageLOC. And that's what took me to start to understand these genes and how we can influence these genes in such a way that all of us can live healthy.

Uh no but you can show it.

Where's the picture?

And the third one is here right in front of us.

Yes, that's another interesting story because when we started Pharmanex in 1995, a friend of mine, Michael and myself, we both came from drug companies and we decided to start Pharmanex. And then three years later because of what we've been doing and how we develop our products, like you said, three companies came and visited with us. And the first two companies, they were drug companies. In fact, one of the drug companies was my former drug company who's now showing interest to develop supplements. They're beginning to believe this idea that preventing disease is a good complement to treating diseases to their drug business in other words. So, the third company came and this is a very strange company. Remember now you guys are all rubies in this room now. So you know something about the business back in 1998, right, when Nu Skin came and visited with Pharmanex. I know nothing about network marketing, I know nothing about direct selling. So when they came and they told us that we are not a drug company, we are in fact a direct selling company, I said I don't know what you're talking about. In fact, you know your company name Nu Skin, you don't seem to be able to speak English because Nu is not spelled that way. So it was very strange. And where are you from? Because Pharmanex was in Los Angeles. So big city, right? Like Singapore, like Kuala Lumpur and KL. But they came from this town called Provo. I've never been to Provo. And I've lived in the United States for close to 40 years now. I've never, I said where are you from? Provo is like, is it as big as Telok Intan? Said that town, that town I know because one day there's somebody famous coming from that town. So, so anyway, so they say, 'Yeah, we're from Utah. We are also interested in buying Pharmanex.' So, we were sitting there in Los Angeles in our company. So, we have three offers and financially it's about the same price. So, it's about I think 135 million or so. It's almost like going into one of your shopping malls here and you go into Prada and you see three different handbags that Angela Loo goes to, right? Oh, no. She goes to Alexander McQueen. So, that's different. So, anyway, one of those fancy handbag shops. So, you see three handbags and you say, 'Whoa, they're all very nice, about the same price. How to choose exactly? How do you choose?' Maybe it's like choosing a wife, too. I don't know. Anyway, so we all sat down and we say, 'Forget about the price. They're about the same. That is not an important reason.' So what do we want Pharmanex to be when it grows up, when it becomes a bigger company? If we go and choose to be acquired or to be bought by a drug company, we knew at that time that Pharmanex is not going to be very different, you know, except now it has a bigger marketing budget. And at that time, by the way, our Pharmanex products that are now still available to all of you, those products were sold in 38,000 stores in United States. We were not international yet. So, we were starting to build a pretty good business. And all the drug companies would do is to take that business and maybe expand it a little bit more, do a bit more advertising. It's a traditional business. So it's not going to change a lot. When we look at Nu Skin, they explained to us that even back in 1998, they had about 600,000 distributors around the world. Malaysia wasn't open yet, by the way. So neither was Singapore, I think. Yeah, neither was Singapore. We were only in Thailand. So there's 600,000 and Blake Roney told me that fine if you choose to come with us we can sell and market all your Pharmanex products around the world almost immediately. That was very interesting. See really almost immediately because in our traditional business it would take us a lot of years to find a distributor, a distributorship, you know, some wholesaler that will take our products and then they'll put it in that stores. But you can take Pharmanex products and make them available in two months or so? He say yeah. And I said really that's very interesting and that was the reason because we wanted to go international obviously, that was perhaps the biggest reason why we made the decision fine let's get ourselves be acquired by Nu Skin. Because that's not the end of the story.

Then Blake, as soon as this is what happens. This is a very good suggestion for all of you. As soon as he signed a check and as soon as he said Nu Skin now owns Pharmanex, he told me go and close and return all the products from those 38,000 stores. We don't want to sell your Pharmanex products in those stores anymore. I sort of looked at him and said just like sitting here talking and I said really Blake why can't we do two channels, okay, because that's good business right to me. I said this guy cannot be very clever. I didn't know him very well then, okay, but he can't be, but he owns the company he can do what he wants with it now since he already paid me. Yeah but I haven't cashed the check yet, so it's still a possibility of pulling out. And so I said, 'Really? Is that what you want to do?' He say, 'Yeah.' I said, this at the back of my mind, I said, I don't know how to convince this stupid person why close it? Because think about it, we can sell in the traditional market and we start this direct selling channel. Makes a lot of sense to me. Perfect sense.

Yeah. And I think this is perhaps the most important thing for all of you to remember. He said, 'Joe, you don't understand our business. I think you're quite clever and not stupid. Let me explain it to you.' I say, 'Fine.' He say this company that is Nu Skin has been founded on a very simple principle and that is Nu Skin is for the distributors. It is by the distributors and it is with the distributors. The translation is pretty important because this is what makes Nu Skin special. Okay. So he say Joe now that I've given you this concept let me teach you one more lesson and that is if we continue to sell Pharmanex products in those 38,000 stores we are essentially competing with our distributors. And the reason why we are competing is because we have no control on the sale price in the stores or in the shops. They can set whatever price they want and most likely they will discount your products. And when they do that, how do you expect a Nu Skin distributor to compete? Because we never discount our products, right? So what happens is you have made all the Nu Skin distributors to be free salespeople for those stores. We are never ever going to do that. So we closed it and this is almost coming to the end of the story because we started to sell our Pharmanex products. I still remember the month January 1999. That month sales of Pharmanex products was much bigger than the previous 12 months total added together and one month in Nu Skin. And I guess you guys are still doing good because it continues to grow and that is perhaps my first lesson in direct selling that hey this actually might work.

What makes me stay behind? I review my life and my career every five years and I've been with Nu Skin now what, almost 15 years now. So, it always surprises me. What am I doing? I'm still here in Provo, Utah. Okay. Every time I think about it, I think it came down to one simple reason for me, and it's because of all of you. Because I always felt and after 15 years I'm not that stupid after all. I have learned a little bit about direct selling and word of mouth marketing. So all of you have now become one big experiment for me. Remember I'm a scientist so I watch, this is the single most important scientific study I have ever done in my life and you are all participating because you are all the subjects. Yeah, it's so important and that's the reason why I am here is because you have taught me so much about life. You have taught me that you can be successful while having fun. And you have taught me, each and every one of you whether you are a star creator or whether you're a team elite or even a first time joining the Nu Skin world, you have taught me that when people come together and get yourself aligned into a team and believing in that you are going to succeed, you succeed. You have family now. You've taught me so much. I think every five years when I think back why am I staying? Okay. Nu Skin distributors. Really? Seriously? Yeah. That's why I'm still here. So, thank you.

What's my greatest satisfaction? Um, versus in the pharmaceutical days? Yeah, my greatest satisfaction is all these products that I helped to develop together with the team. I also have a team back in Provo. They're all scientists. So these products that we have developed and we launch it, I actually can touch all the people who are taking the products. You know previously in my drug development days I don't see who used my products. I mean I don't even know, first of all it takes 10 years to develop a drug and by the time I finish developing it I have no idea who is using the drug. In this particular company, you know, I know all the consumers and all the customers and everything. I'm so close to all of you. I can get all the feedback. It gives me a lot of satisfaction to know that the products are bringing good health and making you look really good on the skincare side. I mean it gives me great satisfaction to see those products giving you those benefits.