Dr Steve Nugent = Why I Joined Mannatech (บรรยายไทย)

I want to follow a theme, and I heard this from JP and I've heard it from many of you who are real leaders in this industry. That it's not about how many, it's about the quality of what you have. Real leaders. Well, now I'll talk to you about my story. Every time I come here, I'm always humbled by the fact that I'm asked to tell my story again and again. And I'm thinking, well, gosh, they've already heard it. But there must be some folks here who probably haven't, so we'll do that tonight. And thinking about what JP said: how do you put years of your life into minutes? It's kind of tough. So this is the really abbreviated version. I was a very successful practitioner in the United States, in fact in North America. I was probably the most successful integrative medicine practitioner at that time. I had an amazing clinic. I mean, it really was amazing. We had two medical doctors on my staff, a chiropractor, a massage therapist. It was really a very integrative medicine, very holistic approach, at a time when people weren't doing that very much. We had 13 exam rooms, we had an onboard laboratory, nothing like Mannatech's laboratory, but it was adequate for us to do the testing that I wanted to do. And we had patients coming to see me from around the world, from every continent on the planet. Usually with translators, because I only speak two languages: that's English and Texan. When I moved to Texas, I found out it was a different language. Anyway. So I really had an amazing practice. I made almost a million dollars average per year just my personal salary; that's not clinic income. And I had a medical publishing business, made about a million US on that each year. And I had a lecture business, because I taught doctors. I did lectures where, depending on what the lecture topic was, they might pay $125 a seat, perhaps $200 a seat to hear me talk for two to three hours. I had more money than I could spend. I had so much money that I could walk into any store and say, "I'll take that," not "How much is it?" just "I'll take that" and never think about it. And sometimes, "I'll take five of those; I like that." I had financial freedom, which you can have in this business. I had personal freedom, which you can have in this business. I had time freedom, because only I could tell myself when I was going to work. I mean, it was my clinic. It was great. And we had such an amazingly high success rate with very tough cases that we kept getting sent tougher and tougher cases all the time. In fact, my colleagues would often make, sort of not really a good joke, but to say that my clinic was the "last chance clinic." Well, you see, in the United States, malpractice is a very big thing — malpractice lawsuits against doctors. It's a big deal. So most doctors, if they see a patient that they think is not going to make it, it's like, "Whoa, send them to Nugent, he'll take anybody." And I never turned down a patient. It didn't matter how sick they were. It didn't matter if I thought they were going to die in the next few days or a week; I would still take them. Because every life is important. No life can be pushed aside because you're afraid of a lawsuit or whatever.

Well, I had so much money because of the success in my practice that I was able to budget about 30% of my monthly budget to treat indigent patients — people that had no money and they couldn't get the care that they required. I would take them in. I would pay all their expenses, their medical expenses of course, all their fees with me were waived, and I would also provide them with supplements at no charge. Every once in a while, I'd say, "You know what, we've got this new product to look at, and I wonder if you'd help me out by allowing me to give you this product at no charge, and I will test your blood or whatever other appropriate test for that product to see if it has any value." I did that for 16 years. And I found almost nothing that had any value of any kind. It was very disappointing. And boy, did I have network marketers come into my clinic. I'm telling you what, they all had this thought: they knew my reputation, they thought, "If we can sign up Nugent, we're on Easy Street. We'll never have to recruit another person again the rest of our lives." So I would test the products, be disappointed by them, and then politely tell them not to return to my clinic. One day, there was this very obnoxious fellow, quite a bit taller than me — I had to look up at him several inches when I spoke with him. But before I met him, what he decided to do was to convince a brand new receptionist who just started work that day. Now, I hired this young girl because of her heart, not because of her brain. Very sweet girl. My clinic was all about heart, it was all about caring for people. And she wasn't very bright, and she wasn't having success getting a job, but she was really sweet and she had a big heart, so she was hired. Well, the problem with that is that this really big Mannatech associate was able to trick her that day. You see, I had a patient waiting list of approximately a year long. But he was in a hurry to see me today. So he convinced her that people who had been waiting for a very long time should be pushed aside for his son, who was desperately ill — his 14-year-old son. Well, she fell for it. She moved some people around and put him in. I get to the exam room, I've got the chart, I pull the chart from the door and I take a look at it. I'm like, "14? Oh, boy, this child's in bad shape." And I walk into the exam room, and there is no child in there; there's simply this six-foot-four man. And I looked outside: "Am I in the right room? Did I come the right... yeah, I guess I did." And I said, "Are you Mr. Haddad?" "Yeah." "Where's your son?" "Well, he couldn't make it today." He couldn't make it? This tells me that he's so desperately ill I needed to see him today? "Well, yeah, yeah, but what I really wanted to talk to you about, Doc, was these miracle sugars." Well, that really set me off, because I'm a pretty serious fellow. What I'm thinking about is patients. Nothing else is more important than the patients. And I'm getting aggravated as he keeps telling me about these miracle sugars. First of all, you don't use the word "miracle" when you talk to a scientist, okay? Science doesn't have miracles; you have scientific facts you can validate or not. That's the way it works. So he went on, and finally I said, "You're going to have to leave, and I don't want to see you back here again." Well, a few months later, he did it again. And a couple of months later, he did it again. And then the fourth time he did it, when I opened up the exam room door and there he was, I thought, "This man is not mentally well. He wants to be abused. I must help this man." So I sit down patiently and I say, "All right, Mr. Haddad, you tell me about your miracle sugars." He just goes on and on, and everything's a miracle and magic, and all the kinds of words you don't use with a scientist. And then I politely asked him to leave, and I said I would talk with a scientist from his company. Well, my next conversation was with a man named Ray Robbins, Mannatech's number one associate, who by the way has a bachelor's degree in biochemistry. He knew that I was not responding to the miracle approach. So he talked with me in a coffee shop until 4 AM one morning, doing the best he could to answer my questions — scientific questions. Then I got hooked up with some of the science people at Mannatech, and that's when I was really interested. So I talked with Sam Castor, and I had some products sent up to my clinic. I asked some of my patients to volunteer, and I began checking their blood and doing other tests. And I was stunned at what I saw. Couldn't happen. These things can't happen. People can't be recovering like this. Well, the textbooks tell me it's not possible. Let me tell you about a couple of cases that really put me over the top. And I could tell you about hundreds of cases, but there isn't time, so I'll just do two.

There was a young couple just over 30, where the woman in the couple had been to a place called Mayo Clinic, which is the number one — it's the premier medical diagnostic center in the United States. She had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She had been treated with surgery, chemo, radiation, and she's going to die. Now at that time, back in 1995, the survival rate from that disease was less than one percent for 90 days. And they didn't expect just about anybody to make it more than 90 days. She was brought into my clinic because of a referral. She went back to her primary physician who said, "You know, Mayo says you have 10 days to live. There's nothing I can do for you. But maybe you can go see Nugent," because he didn't want her dying in his clinic. Well, she was brought to me on a gurney, oxygen, she was unconscious when they brought her in. But her husband was conscious, obviously, and he was pretty broken up. I mean, they were just over 30. Very unusual case. And I looked at her chart and I looked at her and I thought, "Oh my God, she could die in minutes." But then I thought, "She deserves a chance. We're going to do what we can do." Now at that time, we didn't have Ambrotose yet. Ambrotose was made in 1996. In 1995, we had the first glyconutrient product, which is called Manapol. And the trade name for that glyconutrient was Manapol. Tomorrow I'm going to use the word Manapol a lot in training, and you're going to hear that word a lot in future months. Manapol is the mother of all glyconutrients; that's how it all got started. Now keep in mind, this is just one glyconutrient, not the whole complex, just one. But in my opinion, the most important one. So it used to come in bottles, very expensive bottles, and the capsules only had 30 milligrams of Manapol per capsule because of the cost of Manapol; it's outrageously high. It takes 272 kilograms of aloe vera leaf to make one kilogram of Manapol, and it goes through a very special, very expensive process. If you get yourself a bottle of Manapol capsules, boy, that's like platinum. I mean, we're really talking real value here. So I said, "I'll tell you what: every time your wife regains consciousness, I want you to put these capsules in her mouth." "And well, how many?" I said, "As many as you can." "How often?" "As often as possible." I had no protocol. I had no idea if it would work at all. I gave him dozens of these bottles because there was so little Manapol per capsule. Ten days go by. And I'm going into one of the exam rooms, and of course all my exam rooms had phones in them and intercom and all that. And one of my nurses says, "You have a call for Mr. so-and-so on line two." And as soon as I heard the name, I thought, "Oh no, it's ten days, his wife has died." I picked up the phone, took a deep breath. And he said, "Dr. Nugent, my wife is sitting up in bed." Relief. And he said, "And she's actually eating some soup today." Now, when you have pancreatic cancer, putting any kind of food into your body is almost impossible. "She's been awake off and on, more and more, and she seems to be getting healthier. Can I stop giving her these capsules?" I said, "You must never stop giving her those capsules. I don't care how healthy she gets, you must never stop giving her those capsules. And don't worry, I'll give them to you for free; don't worry about it." Well, after a while, she made a complete recovery. They had children. Had a good family. We kept in touch for a few years. Now it's hard for me to keep in touch with anybody with my schedule. And that's one. Then during that same month, I had another patient sent to me who was referred after she had been to Mayo Clinic. And this woman was in very bad shape; she was 65. Very poor health. She had something called cardiomyopathy — very weak heart muscle, so weak that she could only walk a few steps with a walker and oxygen, trying to catch her breath before she'd have to sit after two or three steps. Well, to make matters worse, she had cancer tumors in both lungs. Because her heart was so weak and because of her age, they said, "You know, we really don't dare do surgery on you; you probably won't make it. And the form of cancer that you have won't respond to chemo or radiation. So, six months. So make your peace with God and do your final things that you do with your family, because six months is probably the most you have." Well, I looked at her chart, I saw this, and yeah, by everything I knew, she probably had six months at the outside. But I thought, "Let's try." So I gave her these Manapol capsules. I gave her a bunch. And I gave her different nutrients to help her heart, because that was a different situation. Well, over time, her heart got stronger. And over time, these tumors encapsulated, so the immune system actually grew a capsule around them. Now, that's a good thing because then they can't spread. And if the capsule is tight enough, they are starved of oxygen and food. And what happens to any living thing that can't get oxygen and food? It dies. And then eventually they're reabsorbed into the system through enzymes. And she is well. Well, about a year after that, at Christmas time, I received — and I always get this confused, I think they're called Afghans; I don't know if you knit them or crochet them or whatever you do, but they're like these blanket things. Probably the ladies know what I'm talking about, okay? One of the colleges I went to was the University of Michigan, and their school colors are maize and blue. And this Afghan was made in a pattern of maize and blue. And she had a picture of herself and her grandchildren at the Christmas tree, and said, "Thank you for allowing me to spend Christmas with my grandchildren." And I keep getting cards from her every year. She's doing well. That's just two. I could give you hundreds.

So it was obvious to me that Mannatech had something going for them. This Manapol stuff was pretty darn interesting. And I'm doing lectures now voluntarily for Mannatech, and I'm not asking for one penny of payment because I didn't need any money. As I'm doing the lectures, the thought suddenly occurs to me that I have no idea what it's like to be a network marketing associate. I mean, some of the lectures I'm doing, 80% of the people are signing up at the end of the lecture, and I have no idea what I'm getting them into. Oh. I spoke this morning about leadership, and I think it's crucial to success in this business. When I was in the US Marine Corps, that was more than four decades ago. Yes, I am that old, but I don't look it. Thank you very much. I was fortunate enough to be chosen to go to Marine Corps Leadership School, and the leadership principle that I valued the most was this one: never ask your man to do anything you would not do or could not do yourself. I think that that is key in being a leader. Not just set the example, but do what you say. So here I am, telling people they should become network marketing associates. I don't have a clue what it's about. So what did I do? I became an associate. I didn't need to; I didn't need the money, and I didn't have a clue what I was doing. It took me about a year to go from brand new associate, not having any idea what I was doing, to become one of Mannatech's top business builders that year. In fact, how many of you have ever seen a platinum presidential ring? Okay. How many of you would like to see one? Here you are. Well, eventually I had to go to work for Mannatech. I had no choice because my good friend Sam Castor, who is not only a wonderful human being and humanitarian, he also is very clever. One day, Sam came up to me and he said, "You know, Dr. McAnalley is a brilliant laboratory scientist, but he's not an expert in the therapeutic use of dietary supplements." All right, I agree. "You know, we really need somebody who is working for us who is an expert in this area, like maybe you." I said, "Sam, why do I want to work for Mannatech? I have plenty of money. I like my life. My life is good." He said, "No, no, we need you." I said, "Well, how much would you pay me?" And he told me, and I actually started laughing. I said, "So you want me to take a 95% cut in pay to be on the road most of the year and have more bosses than I can possibly identify? Nah." He puts his arm around me and he said, "Steve, I know your heart. I know you'll say yes." Well, here I am. Well, you know, money is important, and I want all of you to understand this. Think about what I did with my money when I had so much of it. I helped people who no one else would help. I couldn't have helped them if I didn't have money, could I? Having money is a good thing. The more you have, the more people you can help. That's the way you need to focus.

Well, so I start now. I'm working in the lab, I'm making formulas for Mannatech, and I'm on the road. And at first, it was interesting. Sam, when he hired me, said, "You can keep your downline," which that year made me $285,000 US dollars. Not too bad with a really awful comp plan. We had a binary thing; I don't know if you know how those work, but it was an awful plan. And then in midstream, we switched from binary to our newer awful plan. The one we have now is 400% better than the one that I used when I was building my business. So I give up the $285,000 a year. And then the legal department says, "Oh, by the way, you can't publish anymore because you work for us, and we don't want anyone to think that you're ever connecting our products to disease. And of course, your medical books all connect product to disease, so you have to give up your publishing business." Well, there goes another million dollars. And I find that I'm on the road so much now that I can't work my clinic anymore. I just can't make the commutes anymore. So I give up my clinic as well. And then they tell me, "Well, you can't do your doctor lectures anymore because when you lecture the doctors, you're talking about disease, and we don't want anybody..." Yeah, yeah, yeah, I get all that. So I had to give that up. And now I'm not making a whole bunch of money, but I'm working a whole bunch of days. And it starts with a couple of days a week, and then it's three and four and five, and then it gets up to about 300 days a year. One year was 340 days. Now, I don't know if you can get a picture of this, but imagine doing a city a day all year long. Now I know that my friends Bruce and Rona, you know what that feels like. We did 11 cities in 11 days together in Europe; that didn't feel good, did it? No. And I do that all year. In fact, the Australian office, every three days they put a different corporate person with me because they can't take it. I'm serious, every three days they put a new person with me. It's not a glamorous life. It's very stressful, it's very hard on the body. I mean, there are times when I flew into the United Kingdom for their UK convention, I had to lecture that night, and I had had zero sleep. And by the time I started my lecture, it was then 28 hours with zero sleep. I did the lecture anyway. Just put this on autopilot, okay. So it's not a real glamorous life, but it's an important life. The model that all of you are working in, network marketing, that model is the only way for us to reach the maximum number of people with the best technologies in the world. It's the only way. All of you are serving such a tremendous purpose, more than you know. With every person you sign up, with every person you interact with. So I must support you in your efforts. As I explained to you this morning, taking this last doctorate degree program was to try and learn new ways to help support you better. And I hope to be able to do that in the future. Well, let me finish my story with — and I usually have a hard time with this part — with the thing that just cemented Mannatech for me forever.

My son was one of 25 children, and we lived in Michigan at the time. Michigan has 11,449 lakes, so there's water everywhere. There's water, there's mosquitoes. And it happened that in the schoolyard, there was a swarm of mosquitoes that were carrying a virus which never got a name; it still has just a code name, a new alphanumeric code. The swarm of mosquitoes bit the 25 children who were playing in the yard. And within 24 hours, 22 of the 25 were dead from viral encephalitis. My son was one of those 25 children who was still alive after 24 hours. And viral encephalitis is a viral infection that goes up the spine and into the brain, and it causes the brain to swell. As the brain temperature goes up from infection, you see your brain doesn't have an immune system. So once an infection goes in here, there's nothing you can do. For viral infections, in most cases, and especially in that year, there was nothing you could do. So it was viral. Now, as the brain is expanding in the brain case, the brain cells are being damaged from the pressure pushing against the brain case, and it also causes grand mal seizures. My son was having grand mal seizures that lasted more than an hour, that were so severe that the seizures alone probably should have killed him. When my ex-wife and I took him into the hospital, the neurologist on staff had already seen the 22 children that had died, and the other two children had already been admitted and their prognosis was not good either. And this neurologist, very cold, cold as ice, after he had looked at my son, he came up to my ex-wife and I and he said, "He's not going to make it through the night. He'll be dead in the morning." My ex-wife nearly fainted. And my Marine Corps training came back, and I thought, "I am really going to punish you for that." But I didn't. I did tell him that I didn't want him around my wife — my ex-wife, I wish she was still my wife — ever again. And I made it stern enough where I never saw his face again while my son was in the hospital for three months. Well, I brought in nutrients. And you know how it is, you're in the hospital and the doctors will say, "You can't bring those things in here, that stuff, that nutrition stuff, that food." We had a lot of people to get well after all. So I was bringing nutrition products in that I knew helped the brain and I knew helped the immune system, because I was not going to accept that my son would die. That was not an option. Well, he survived the 24 hours and continued to survive. And then as we got more diagnosis, we were getting now, "Well, he'll be permanently disabled. He'll never have motor function correctly — arms and legs — because of the brain damage. And he'll be permanently mentally — he'll never have an IQ above that of a five-year-old." And I said, "I do not accept that. That's not going to happen." So I kept it up. And over a period of 90 days, we managed to get him to the point where the virus is gone. And all we now have to deal with is healing the brain, which of course we're told is impossible. So that he has motor function back again, so he can walk again, and think properly again. He had memory lapses. In fact, the damage to his short-term memory — a portion of his brain called the hypothalamus gland — he was unable to remember anything for more than a few minutes. And every day that I went in to see him in the hospital, we would have exactly the same conversation word for word, which would start with, "Dad, how come you never come to see me?" And of course I was seeing him every day, and we'd have the same talk every day. Well, we had to deal with that. So I did all I could, but now there was this Manapol stuff. How might this help? Not sure. So I started giving him that. And it started to look as though we were having improvements in brain function. Now at this point, Ambrotose gets invented. And I start giving him this Ambrotose stuff. And over time, motor function has returned. He's walking now. When my son walks, there's a little bit of a gait, the way he walks. I mean, you can see that there's something, but then you could say he's trying to imitate John Wayne, so that's okay too. And we got his thinking improved a little more, a little more, a little more. But we couldn't stop the seizures. So I decided to give him a lot of Omega-3, which we'll talk about in the training tomorrow, and lots of Classic Ambrotose. Classic Ambrotose has Manapol in it, so now we're doing both. And over time, over about 18 months of doing this, I'm checking his blood every week to see if we can lower his anti-seizure drugs. And eventually, we got him off the anti-seizure medication completely. And he's had no seizures. He's 28 now. When he was 19, he actually filed a patent. Now, the patent wasn't issued, but the point was he has far above average intelligence. He's not mentally disabled. He doesn't have motor function issues. You would never know that my son had a problem. Thank God for Mannatech.

So when people ask me, "Why do you want to spend 300 days a year on the road doing what you do, going through all this stress?" Because there are no products on this planet, there are no technologies on this planet that can do what Mannatech technologies can do. I know. I've tested more than 6,000 products. I'm a scientist; I examine things objectively, not emotionally. What we have at Mannatech has no second place. There is no equal. There is no competition. And there are billions of people who desperately need these technologies. Desperately. That means all of you have a responsibility to get these technologies to as many people as you can. You must never say, "Well, I'm afraid to talk to this person." Every person is worthy of a chance for optimal health. Every person needs these technologies. You, Mannatech associates, with this marketing model, are the only way to make this happen to the people all over the planet. This is not just a business. This is a mission. I hope that all of you will join me in this mission, because there is no more important mission that I know of. Thanks for listening to my story.