A Conversation with Jared Turner, CSMO February 19, 2014

Transcription

1 A Conversation with Jared Turner, CSMO February 19, 2014 Shane Smith, Young Living Content Marketing Director: I m here with Jared Turner, who has recently become Young Living s Chief Global Sales and Marketing Officer. As you can imagine, Jared s a busy guy, but he has graciously agreed to spend a few minutes discussing his excitement about his expanded role and his vision for the next chapter of Young Living s success story. Jared, let s start on a personal note. As the new head of Young Living s Sales and Marketing teams, what do you want people to know about you? Jared: Great question! I guess the biggest thing I would love our members to know about me is that I am unified with our founders, Gary and Mary Young, in supporting their vision for this company and growing it to new heights. I am a big believer in the oils and have my whole family hooked! Shane: You started at the company as an attorney right? It s a pretty big jump going from attorney to CSMO, isn t it? Jared: Agreed! When I joined the company a little less than two years ago, I really had no idea that this is where I would end up, but it s really where my unique talent set should be. I started as associate general counsel in charge of Young Living s international legal affairs. Then a few weeks later, Gary asked me to replace two vice presidents to become the Vice President of International. All of the global general managers began reporting to me, and we pushed through several major new market openings: Germany, Hong Kong, and Canada. We re also pumped to open Malaysia and Sweden this year! Nine months after becoming a VP, the owners asked me to take on the U.S. market, and I was promoted to Chief Global Sales Officer. With the recent departure of Craig Aramaki, Gary asked me to combine the Sales and Marketing departments into one. Shane: How was it working with Craig? Jared: Craig was a great colleague and a personal friend. He mentored me in many important aspects of marketing while we travelled the world together. He really pushed for a stronger social media engagement effort and launched the member first priority, which we work toward every day on a company- wide basis.

2 I wish him the best as he uses his entrepreneurial spirit to build his own Young Living business in the field. How much does it say about our incredible momentum when an executive wants to throw his hat into the ring out in the field? Shane: So now you re the CSMO. How s it going? Jared: I ll tell you what: with every role I ve taken on at Young Living, there s been an initial feeling of trepidation, but I quickly move past that to a getting things done mode. My personal business mantra is Action! and I m promoting that throughout my teams. Although I m not formally trained in marketing, I have an innate curiosity and an obsessive fixation on problem- solving that enables me, as a somewhat creative business guy, to support the marketing initiatives we have and to drive them to new and exciting heights. This obsession has allowed me to get a lot of big projects done at Young Living in support of Gary s vision for growth. Shane, I ve got to tell you, when it comes to growth, our company is absolutely crushing it! We re at high double- digit growth, and that momentum is just increasing was spectacular, but 2014 is going to be legendary! One of my absolute top priorities is to develop and implement a new brand look and feel for the company. As many of our members know, we ve gone through a couple of brand iterations over the last few years, and it s just never felt right. I will tell you this: I am possessed by a drive to do it right this time, and the founders and executive team are backing me 100 percent. This is what s different this time around with branding: Gary and Mary are involved. They trust me to take our current brand that reflects our rich traditional heritage and expand it to be more modern and appealing to younger demographics while still representing our history and roots. Shane: That s fantastic news, Jared. So talk to us about where we re at with creating a new brand for Young Living. It s a big task, as you well know. Jared: Absolutely. Like I was saying, we re working to blend our rich heritage with cutting- edge design that will get people of every age and demographic excited about our brand. We need to keep our heritage as our center but feel free to explore outside of these traditional ideas for new and exciting design and messaging. We re really evolving our messaging to embrace the next 20 years. We need to engender trust with our members. We want to create something beautiful that creates impactful, emotional connections with our members, something that showcases our roots, our quality, our curiosity, our sense of adventure, and our energy. We ve had a very successful first 20 years, but the next

3 20 are going to be full of innovation and creativity, and it will be reflected in our branding. We ve got this beautiful history at Young Living, which is our foundation. What Gary and Mary have done to build this amazing company is legendary. The responsibility is now on my team and me to incorporate that amazing history into a modern and exciting brand and message concept. And we WILL deliver. I m a glass is half full kind of a person, and I m completely optimistic and positive about what we can achieve as a company, starting with this rebrand. At times my ideas are way ahead of our operational capabilities, but to the credit of Travis Ogden, our Chief Operating Officer, he and the other executives are supporting this ideation process to help us create the absolute best branding in the industry and do what will make our members excited. In addition to this rebrand, we re also infusing some serious power into our public relations and social media efforts, and we are also going to better leverage our global farms, which really set us apart from the competition and testify of our commitment to quality. Stay tuned for some announcements on all of these fronts! Shane: It s really exciting to hear that, and I know our members can t wait for the new brand rollout. Now for the question that s on everybody s mind: What s the ETA for the new brand? Jared: Shane, we re going to unveil the new brand concept at our convention this June. We ll unveil it from the main stage, and we ll also have a showroom ready that people can walk through to experience what will be rolled out post- convention. I think people are going to be extremely happy with what we re doing! After the unveiling at convention, we ll work quickly to phase out existing inventory with the old look until the new look and feel permeate every part of the company. Young Living is finally, FINALLY, going to have a uniform, consistent, and exciting brand that we can all be proud of. Shane: Let s talk about your new group for a minute. You brought together the sales and marketing teams in a transition meeting the other day. How did that go? Jared: It was awesome! I felt a lot of positive energy from the group during the meeting and heard some great feedback afterward. The purpose of the meeting was to instill in them the knowledge that we are in a new era at Young Living where creativity and innovation will be valued highly and where people can share ideas in an atmosphere of respect and support. In my mind, that s the only way to unleash your talent base to create a stable foundation in which they feel empowered to take risks with creative and innovative ideas. That s what we re working toward. Oh, and I may also have said that they are

4 all going to be exhausted working with me to get everything done that we need to by convention! But I was sure to reiterate that I ll be right down in the trenches with them. Shane: Speaking of convention, what can our members expect this June, besides the new brand unveiling we were just talking about? Jared: Glad you asked! I can say without hyperbole that this will be the biggest and best convention Young Living has had in our 20 years as a company. We weren t kidding around when we announced the theme for this year s event, Live Your Dream. That s exactly what people who have fully embraced Young Living s lifestyle are doing, and every attendee is going to leave the event completely inspired to use Young Living to live the life they ve always dreamed of. As we all know, Young Living isn t just about products, it s about lifestyle; and that will be the focus of this convention. One major highlight that members should look forward to is the educational component of this year s event it s going to be huge! We re going to hear outstanding keynotes from our Founder and CEO D. Gary Young and from John C. Maxwell, a world- renowned leadership expert whose books have sold millions of copies. Just as exciting is the fact that for the first time, we re going to offer a truly personalized education experience. Our attendees will be able to pick a customized, guided track of workshops to completely individualize the type of Young Living education they receive at the event. We ve never done anything like it. One size fits all workshops are out the door, and I think people are really going to enjoy this new educational experience. We re also changing our Product Expo into a Lifestyle Expo to showcase how our amazing products are used in everyday life. Besides that, we re also completely revamping our Farm Day experience to make sure every single attendee gets the very most out of their time here. Finally, we re going to be unveiling some new products we ve been working on that our members are absolutely going to love. We know that convention can be costly for our members, both in terms of finances and time, and we absolutely owe them the best experience possible. And we re going to deliver we want our members to go home thinking Wow! Shane: Another topic that I know is at the forefront of a lot of members minds is the status of the new generation of Young Living business tools. Where are we at with these? Jared: Agreed a big topic. We are committed to providing our members with the best tools in the industry. Video is going to be huge for us, and we know how useful it is for sharing Young Living on mobile devices, etc. First up, we re producing a

5 world- class new video that will provide a brief but powerful introduction to Young Living. This will serve as an excellent sharing tool and will be rolling out shortly. That video will quickly be followed by a series of compensation plan training videos, and we ll also be producing some great success story vignettes that are very shareable. I m also excited about a new, branded merchandise store that will be launching by convention. And that s just the stuff I can tell you about right now! Shane: Awesome. We re also improving our customer care experience, aren t we? Jared: Absolutely. We ve made some great strides already, that we re committed to providing a world- class customer experience. It s easy to say that, but how do we walk the walk? The key is the experience. We ve got great people internally and have also beefed up the Customer Care Department leadership team with some seriously experienced people from the direct sales customer service industry. We re also working on a completely revamped back office experience for our members. We ve revamped our recruiting, hiring, and training processes, as well ensuring that we have the best representatives working the phones and interacting with our members. Finally, our wait times are going to drop significantly. How? We re bringing in dozens of experienced people to handle calls more quickly and effectively than ever before. Basically, it s a new day for CCD and our valued members who call in, and we re really excited about the direction this group s moving. Shane: This has been great! Any final thoughts you d like to share with Young Living s members and employees? Jared: Just this: if you re affiliated with Young Living in any way, you re not just part of a successful direct sales company. You are part of a growing, global movement that is changing the trajectory of thousands and thousands of lives. Think about it! Can you sense the aura of excitement and potential surrounding this company? It s unreal and I ve never seen or felt anything like it before. That s what brought me here and that s what keeps me here. The sky s the limit for this company, and I hope we can all catch that vision. This is our moment let s roll!