W H A T

M A K E S

I Y o u I How Successful People Do ^—

What You Can Learn from Them

H E I D I K L U M • M A R K B U R N E T T • B O B C O S T A S

MARIO A N D R E T T I • R I C H A R D H O L B R O O K E

S T E V E F O R B E S • R I C H A R D P A R S O N S • B U D S E L I G

M I C H A E L J . B E R L A N D

D O U G L A S E . S C H O E N

C H A P T E R 3 0

Roger Barnett C H A I R M A N A N D C H I E F E X E C U T I V E O F F I C E R ,

S H A K L E E C O R P O R A T I O N

R oger Barnett is the chairman and chief executive officer of -Shaklee Corporation, one of the leading providers of pre­

mium-quality, natural nutrition, personal care, and household prod­ucts. Founded in 1956, Shaklee is the number one natural j iutrition company in the United States, with more than 750,000 members and distributors in the United States, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Canada, and Taiwan.

Before joining Shaklee, Barnett was the managing partner of Acti­vated Holdings LLC, an investment vehicle for a private family hold­ing company, controlling more than $2 billion in assets. Barnett began his career at the investment banking firm Lazard Freres & Co. He then organized an investment group to acquire control of Arcade, Inc., a fragrance sampling company, and became its president and chief exec­utive officer. During his six-year tenure. Arcade was transformed into the largest sampling company in the world, expanding from a solely U.S. operation intb a global business.

Barnett was also the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer

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ofBeauty.com, which continues to be one of the leading Internet "re­tailers in the cosmetics industry. v

Roger Barnett has had an interesting debate within himself for his entire life: Do I dedicate myself to business and earn money, or do I devote myself to the public sector and try to have an impact on the common good? Or even more challenging: Can I possibly do both at the same time? That became Barnett's quest. As you'll see. theyin andyang of the issue made him uneasy, and his search to find the answer took a lifetime. He finally achieved a melding of the two that satisfied his dual urge. Barnett consid­ers himself a "public sector entrepreneur," and few would disagree.

1. "l T H I N K T H E D E F I N I T I O N O F S U C C E S S , F O R M E , I S

M A K I N G A P O S I T I V E I M P A C T O N T H E W O R L D , L I V I N G Y O U R L I F E S O T H A T T H E W O R L D I S A B E T T E R P L A C E

B Y T H E T I M E Y O U ' R E D O N E . I F A L L Y O U ' R E D O I N G I N Y O U R L I F E I S T A K I N G C A R E O F Y O U R S E L F , F O R

M E T H A T ' S N O T A V E R Y S U C C E S S F U L L I F E . " T •

The world at large has always fascinated me. My parents exposed me to other cultures early on by sending me off to camp in a foreign country when I was six years old. When I was growing up, my parents gave me an option every summer: I could either work or go on a study program, as long it was something substantive. I always searched for programs that would take me as far away as possible to experience something new. I lived with a family in Japan and went to school there; I lived in the bush in Africa doing animal behavior research; I worked on a farm in the Middle East. I n short, I tried to experience the world. . > , ^

From those experiences, I learned that in America, Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East, we're all people with the same funda­mental human needs. And that everyone deserves the opportunity to live a better life.

R O G E R B A R N E T T

I had two role models in my life. One was my great-uncle, who founded a company and ended up giving away more than $1 billion to charity. He was a great entrepreneur. He loved business, but he loved the idea of building businesses rather than just making money for himself. At the end of his life, I spent the summer with him. Every day, some charity—a school or hospital or other organization—^would come to his office and ask for money. That summer, I saw the impact somebody can have giving away substantial amounts of money.

The other role model was my mother, who has dedicated the last forty-two years of her life to public interest law, helping the poorest families, first in New York City and now across the United States, get equal access to the justice system. In my opinion, she is now the leading public interest lawyer in the country; she has helped countless people by devoting 100 percent of her time to making an impact.

With those two people as models, I had a choice: Do I go into the public interest sector, like my mother, and use my time to make an impact? Or do I go into business, like my great-uncle, make money, and use that money to have an impact? I chose to go into business first. I was fortunate enough to be successful, but along the way I got engaged with many different groups and communities across the en­trepreneur/public sector divide. My principal activity, my day job, was making money. Then, after I sold the company, I took some time and said, "What do I want to do next?" After looking at many different industries, I found an industry and a company that would allow me to combine commercial success and public benefit in one undertaking. That company is Shaklee, the number one natural nutrition company in the United States.

You could say that there are two driving forces in my life. First, I've wanted to make a positive impact on the world. My other driving force is that I've always tried to excel at everything I did.

I think you can train yourself to focus your thoughts on success. I played a lot of tennis when I was little against my older brother and his .friends. I wasn't the best athlete in the world, but I was scrappy and had a competitive spirit. I remember playing against bigger and

. elder kids who were better than me, but I knew I could beat them. I f

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there was a high-pressure point on the line, at the critical moment I would announce, "It's match point, and I'm going to win. ' ' Not yell­ing or bragging, just saying it loud enough so they could hear. People thought, "Who is this little kid?" Most opponents couldn't handle it, and they lost.

The difference between getting an A and a B in college, in my mind, was simply effort. Sometimes it would come down to six hours. I used to study with other students. They would go to bed at midnight, when there was still a lot more to be studied and learned. They got tired and lost their ability to focus; I pulled an all-nighter. I n many courses, those extra six hours made the difference between an A and a B. -

One of my goals was to be summa cum laude in college. To pull it off, I needed to get seven A's in my last semester at Yale. I don't think that had ever been done before—normally, you take only four or five classes per semester. But I took seven classes, and I pulled it off. When someone says, "You can't do i t , " that's a challenge I just have to accept. It's about hard work and perseverance.

It was my grandmother who gave me the gift of belief and self-confidence. She gave aU of her grandchildren different nicknames, and she named me "Special." I could have asked her why, could have protested that I'm not really special, but she was my grandmother and I chose to believe her. Before I went to sleep at night she would repeat it to me, and I credit her with giving me self-confidence by making me feel I could do whatever I wanted.

Through the years, that confidence has helped me fight self-doubt and the doubts of others. People are always saying, " I t can't be done." I n every business I've been in, people have questioned whether it could be done. You have to have that unwavering sense that any challenge can be met. I f you don't, you lose.

I have had my moments of doubt. When I went to college, I thought of trying out for the soccer team. I came from a small high school that wasn't known for its athletics, but I was considered a pretty good soccer player. That first week at college, I joined a pickup game right outside my dorm. One guy kicked the ball right by me. He was so good, so quick—he went by me like I was standing still. I thought, "Man, i f

this is a pickup game, imagine what the guys on the team are like." So I never tried out for the team. It turned out that guy was the center halfback for the North Carolina State Championship team; he'd also run the hundred-meter dash in the Olympics for a Caribbean country. He was a superstar. But I didn't know that at the time, and I let myself get psyched out, so I never even tried out. It would have been fun to see what I could have done.

It was in college that my world focus and desire to excel began to work synergistically. When I was in law school at Yale, a group of us built $6 million worth of low-income housing and then wrote a book about it. We tried to publish it as a model. We went to Congress and lobbied for a low-income tax credit so that it could be applied not just to nonprofits, but also to developers. We tried to use private sector techniques for public good.

I've always been fascinated with that approach—trying to lever­age private sector techniques for public sector goals. I was sure I'd eventually have to choose, but I kept trying to combine the two, and I couldn't find aAvay. That's why I'm so excited today about Shaklee: I've actually found something where you don't have to separate the pri­vate and the public sectors. At Shaklee, we use financial incentives for a public good—to bring basic health to people all over the world and to give people the opportunity to earn an income. We're here to guide and direct this behavior until it becomes self-sustaining. It's been a long journey from the start, when I'thought those two things—my public and private sector goals—^would be separate, that a career in one would have to follow a career in the other. At Shaklee, I can do them both, and I think that's unique.

Wangari Maathai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, is a Shaklee partner. She is the global ambassador of our Million Trees/ Million Dreams campaign. Dr. Maathai won the Nobel Prize because she paid people to plant trees. The money, the financial incentive, got people's attention, and they self-organized into groups to teach one another how to plant trees. Along the way, they also taught themselves

'• how to take control of their own community and developed a govern­ing structure.

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" ' Frankly, the person you should be interviewing is Dr. Shaklee, who wrote a book called Thoughtsmanship in the 1940s. Its basic-message was, "Think positive thoughts. You'll achieve success i f you change your mind-set to focus on positive thoughts." The difference between the top ten players in any professional sport and the next ninety is all in the mind. Physically they're all comparable. It's all a mental game.

Today, I think that virtually all of the seven hundred and fifty thou­sand members of Shaklee believe that the company's future wil l be greater than its past. And with that belief, we're succeeding and signifi­cantly outperforming the industry. In that context, I consider myself a kind of public sector entrepreneur—a role that requires the drive, vision, and charisma of a business leader but uses them to do some­thing in the public interest rather than just make money. * - ' f - -. .

I think the definition of success, for me, is making a positive impact on the world, living your life so that the world is a better place by the time you're done. I f all you're doing in your life is taking care of your­self, for me that's not a very successful life.