Herbalife The 51-year-old CEO of Herbalife International of America Inc. is an avid endurance sport athlete, and when he’s not participating in a triathlon, Johnson is working to make Herbalife a healthier enterprise. Since coming on board in 2003, Johnson has taken the $1.3 billion company public, managed a major debt offering, conducted a secondary offering and refinanced the capital structure.

Johnson spoke with Smart Business about his changing view on business leadership, the value of experience and problem with charisma.

Develop your vision. We just put together a vision, mission and values for our company. We rolled this out as a program worldwide. Senior management became trainers of this. It’s almost like the Ten Commandments.

They become an operating methodology for the company. We do the right, honest and ethical thing. We make decisions in our work based on facts, not on hearsay. We work hard and hold ourselves accountable. We strive for excellence. That’s part of our value system.

We apply facts. It’s good to have guts, but you need to go back and look at ‘How are we making this decision?’ Everything comes back, eventually, to the core principles of what we have out there.

Trust your gut. I used to think leadership was 50 percent fraternal — getting people to work with you and for you and seeing the vision — and 50 percent technical — some strong skill that you have and applying it to the market. In today’s world, there is a third piece of leadership — guts, an instinct for where you are in a situation with somebody, when to apply pressure, when not to apply pressure, to have a feel for the meeting.

What is that person’s mental makeup for the day? Sometimes you have to talk people off the ledge. And you don’t want to be pushing when you’re trying to pull them in.

Lead with wisdom. There’s an instinctual part of what I’m learning in life, and especially business, that is ... wisdom. You get it over time. There are some great young leaders, but they have some way that they operate that’s very standardized. As you get a little older, wisdom plays a part of it. And wisdom is guts.

Don’t mistake charisma for leadership. We mistake charisma for guts sometimes. People are drawn to (some executives), but they may not be drawn to something in depth.

They might be drawn to something that is slightly shallow. It might be looks. People are biologically drawn to each other by looks or voice or style or clothes. Someone who has a little depth, someone who has been around the block a few times, has a much more powerful presence than someone who just has presence.

Deal with your weaknesses. This is a clich, but it is a strong one: Hire strength to your weakness. It’s something that I’ve employed all my career that has worked out pretty well for me. Time will be the real judge of it.

I’ve self-educated myself over the years to be as articulate as I possibly can be about financial matters. But this is a world of high finance, especially as companies get larger and get involved in foreign markets and debt markets.

Know the rules. The public company sector in today’s world requires a massive amount of reporting in a massive amount of areas. Areas that you wouldn’t think have public scrutiny now have a major amount of public scrutiny.

Shareholders have a right, and it’s a good right, to know everything about a company. In the past, as a somewhat private company, we didn’t have to have a mass of people doing quarterly accounting for us. We do now. We didn’t have to have ‘Qs and Ks and 8-Ks’ going out every time we sneezed. We didn’t have to be as thoughtful about every statement we made to everybody about everything.

Give back to the community. I’m over that halfway point in life. At some point, you’ve got to start giving back. The sense of the founder of this company was to give back. Even at a young age, he put into place our family foundation with the idea of giving back.

I’m going to measure success in this company on a lot of things. Of course, they’re going to be financial and have Wall Street metrics to them without a doubt. The real success we’re going to have is when people look at the Herbalife brand and don’t have any suspicions. They’re going to say, great products, great people, great company, great community service.

Nobody owns the nutrition brand. I want to own it. We want to own the idea that the mission of nutrition is Herbalife.

Learn from the past. Don’t discount any of your experiences. I am constantly amazed how every experience I’ve had in life — I’ve been a paperboy, cut lawns, shoveled snow, ran a restaurant, a disc jockey, worked in the entertainment industry, published a magazine.

There were points in my life when I thought I was not on the road to success. I didn’t have one of these undergraduate, graduate, Wharton MBA to become the CEO. I didn’t have that track. I had a much less typical track.

The more I found out, the more leaders I encounter, most of them did have pretty untypical tracks. There is a misnomer that there is some planned ascension program for people. Take every experience, gather it in and try and find some horizon point on it.

Don’t give up. When you’re working your butt off and toiling away up through some management rank that may be middle management, and you don’t think there’s any big picture beyond it, don’t be so sure that there’s not. Every experience adds value to who you are.

Keep it simple. What’s lacking in business today is simplicity. People are striving to make things complicated when people should be striving to make things simple. Let’s stop impressing people with all the information we have, and let’s get down to the essential points. Then let’s let communication add the things that we’re missing.

We confuse things. We make simple things confusing. Business is not that complicated. It’s usually a product, a process and a consumer.

Herbalife International is grounded on firm business principles. MLM marketing at its finest is the core of Herbalife. They teach success to their Herbalife distributors and make it a personal goal to achieve that success through proper business development and ongoing training.

2. Herbalife Leads MLM Industry

Herbalife International

Herbalife International, of Inglewood, California, markets weight-control products, dietary supplements, and personal-care products. The company was founded in 1980 by 24-year-old Mark Hughes, who states he was inspired by his mother's unsuccessful struggle to control her weight with amphetamines. However, this claim was contradicted by an autopsy report which indicyated that she had died of an overdose of Darvon, a painkiller that is a controlled dcontradicted by her autopsy. It indicates she died of an overdose of Darvon, a painkiller classsified as a narcotic.

Herbalife's 1993 retail sales totaled $247 million in the United States and $693 million worldwide. Its principal products are Formula #1 (a meal-replacement protein drink mix), Formula #2 (an herbal tablet), Formula #3 (a multivitamin/mineral tablet), and Thermojetics, a weight-control system that includes herbal tablets. The numbered formula products were originally marketed as components of Herbalife's Slim and Trim Program. Today the program is called Herbalife Cellular Nutrition Health and Weight Management System, and some of the ingredients are different.

Hughes dropped out of high school after ninth grade and wound up in legal difficulty that resulted in his staying for three years at a residential school for troubled youngsters. When he was nineteen, his mother died of a drug overdose. According to a 1985 issue of the Herbalife Journal:

Mark became aware of the need for a safe, effective way to lose weight . . . when his mother died as a direct result of following years of unwise dieting practices. This event left him with a vital interest in nutrition and a fervent desire to find a product that would enhance and build health while allowing an individual to take weight off sensibly and safely. . . .

During his search, he had met Richard Marconi, Ph.D., with whom he shared his dream. After a lot of research and testing, Herbalife Slim and Trim was born.

Herbalife's initial marketing included lengthy cable television programs that were filled with financial and health-related testimonials. Sales were also promoted with buttons and bumper stickers that said "Lose Weight Now, Ask Me How."

Herbalife International leads the MLM industry as one of the leaders in teaching people how to become wealthy in a work from home business. Without a doubt, Herbalife leads the way to wealth seekers from a home business.

3. Herbalife International Leads

Herbalife International

Start Living the Life You Want!

1.7 million people have changed their lives with the Herbalife business opportunity — and you can too! If you've ever dreamt of a better life, Herbalife can show you how. Now's the time to take charge of your future, earn extra income and help others improve their lives.

Reach Your Potential with an Herbalife Sponsor.

An Herbalife Sponsor can help you get your business off to a great start! Benefits of an Herbalife sponsor:

Assistance with setting achievable goals,

Ongoing support to reach your goals,

Experienced knowledge of successful sales and marketing tools,

Useful tips and insights about the products.

Herbalife International of America, Inc.

Address: P.O. Box 80210

Los Angeles, CA 90080-0210

Ph: 866-866-4744

Ph: 310-216-9661

Fax: 310-258-7019

We offer life-changing products and an unparalleled business opportunity. What started with founder Mark Hughes' dream over 27 years ago has become a world-class company with over 1.7 million Distributors.

We, at Herbalife International are dedicated to sharing the quality Herbalife products that have helped us become healthy as well as tens of thousands of people around the world.

Herbalife's high-quality products and programs offer:

Successful Weight Loss

Improved Nutrition

Enhanced Personal Care

The Opportunity for Financial Reward

Herbalife Countries World Wide

Scientifically designed with your success in mind Herbalife's innovative products have been developed by scientists, doctors and nutritionists with your personal wellness goals in mind. And while Herbalife's nature-inspired formulas are designed to put a lifetime of well-being within reach, the promise of the business opportunity also makes your financial success a rewarding possibility!

Experts you can trust Herbalife's Scientific Advisory Board, Medical Affairs Group and Medical Advisory Board are the guiding forces behind Herbalife's industry-leading success. This team of respected scientific experts directs the development of Herbalife products through research and product testing, so that Herbalife quality meets the highest standards set for the industry today.

Support you can count on.

With a team of more than 1.7 million independent Distributors selling Herbalife products in 65 countries worldwide (and annual retail sales of $3 billion in 2006), you can be sure you'll always have the support you need to succeed. When you're ready to change your life, we're proud to support your success every step of the way as you:

Meet your nutritional, weight-loss and personal-care needs with Herbalife. Quality products and expert support make it easy to look, feel and live your best. Discover Herbalife - and discover a lifetime of well-being.

Herbalife International

Herbalife International Leads

4. Herbalife International
Herbalife states that its Nutrition Advisory Board consists of "leading experts in the fields of nutrition and health who help educate and train our independent Distributors on the principles of nutrition, physical activity and healthy lifestyle."

5. Herbalife Products
Herbalife products have been criticized by consumer organisations for being nutritionally unbalanced, with weight loss attributed to loss of water and muscle rather than fat, and for being overpriced by comparison to similar, conventionally marketed, products

6. Herbalife International
Proponents claim that the Herbalife strategy is aligned with health industry recommendations for safe weight control, eating a balanced diet, low-energy food with regular exercises, and that their nutritional and weight management line of products facilitate this through macronutrient and micronutrient food formulas.

7. Herbalife International
Herbalife's product offering includes weight-management products such as Formula 1 Nutritional Shake Mix, a meal-replacement shake and one of the first products introduced by the company. Other nutritional products offered by Herbalife range from dietary supplements made from vitamins, minerals and herbs to personal care products emphasizing nutritional and herbal ingredients, such as aloe vera and vitamin C.