Orrin Woodward is perhaps one of the greatest educators and contributors to the leadership philosophy Those who say it can't be done are often interrupted by those who are doing it, and he is unquestionably a living illustration of this principle in action. His whole life seems to consist of doing what others believe is impossible. Since childhood, if intimate friends or relatives were to describe Orrin in a single term, any one of the following answers would be at the top of the list: honorable, logical, driven, competitive, strong-willed, entrepreneurial, creative, and the like.
Born in 1967 into a middle-class family in Flint, Michigan, Orrin and his family moved to the small town of Columbiaville when he was six years old. Having enjoyed the strength of community in a small town environment under modest economic circumstances, Orrin learned many invaluable principles of life. He completed LakeVille High School near the top of his class and was also awarded the Garth Yorton Award for Male Athlete of the Year. Following high school, he paid his own way through college by co-oping at AC SparkPlug. He pursued his degree from GMI-EMI Institute and finished his education in 1990 by receiving a Bachelor of Science Degree in Manufacturing Systems Engineering, capped off with induction into the Gamma Mu Iota Honor Society. Orrin started work at AC Rochester, a division of General Motors, in 1990, and tied the knot with the love of his life in June of 1992. And so the story begins...
Orrin's results in his short nine-year career at General Motors offer ample evidence of his creative talents and future successes. By the time he was 25 years old, he had received four US Patents (three of which went to production) and accepted an unheard of promotion to Senior Engineer. Not finished, a year later, he received a prestigious National Benchmarking Award for technical competitive analysis. In fact, he was the first recipient of the award for developing and applying a technical benchmarking process. From the outside looking in, Orrin's career, marriage, and his newly acquired title of "Dad" appeared to be ideal. However, inside Orrin burned an unquenchable desire to own his own business. Realizing that GM's growth had leveled off and reductions in the management team were announced, Orrin could not reconcile the long hours needed to continue his corporate climb. His free time was invested in MBA study from the #2 business school (at the time), University of Michigan, but the avenue for advancement at GM was closing. His dream for a future at GM, in other words, had plateaued, despite his exploits and recognition.
Not easily dissuaded or discouraged, and after a humorous entanglement with a complete stranger and his baseball cards...Orrin ended up joining Amway... In truth, he wanted nothing to do with the company at first; however, his future sponsor promised to return all of his cards if he signed up. Fortunately, while returning the baseball cards, Orrin's sponsor introduced him to several leadership tapes that changed his perspective completely. The tapes, from economist and adjunct professor at NY University, Paul Pilzer, helped him realize that network marketing could be built respectably around leadership communities, rather than the door-to-door sales model he envisioned the company to be. The more he listened to the tapes, the more convinced Orrin became that he and Laurie could build leadership communities, freeing themselves from corporate America and entering the entrepreneurial field as business owners. The lid on his future, in other words, was removed, and his dream for the future was restored!
Enthusiastically, Orrin told Laurie about his crazy idea to make the Amway business a professional leadership development model through building leadership communities. Laurie, although reluctant at first, agreed to support his crazy plan, and the vision of a leadership community business was born. Consequently, for the last five years of Orrin's GM career, which ended in 1998, he also pursued his entrepreneurial venture, planning, doing, checking, and adjusting (PDCA) his leadership communities in an attempt to build his business.
Orrin approached his new venture with his usual tenacity and his (now famous) PDCA methodology of continuous improvement. However, despite his best efforts, Orrin found himself applying monumental effort in his new business without achieving the results he expected. It was only years later that Orrin learned that Amway had been flatlined for decades. Intuitively, Orrin and his business partner Chris Brady (co-author of the best seller Launching Leadership Revolution) realized they must start their own Internet business in order to help their people win. However, in late 1998, Amway announced it was launching an entirely new business model and sister organization called Quixtar. People in Amway had the option to join Quixtar and not renew their Amway businesses. Orrin's entire community of around 200 active people chose this course, quitting Amway by not renewing their contracts and joining Quixtar in 1999 instead. Accordingly, Orrin and Chris put their ideas for their own business model on hold since Quixtar promised to make the needed changes for people to succeed.
Believing there was no longer a need to start their own network marketing company, Orrin and Chris, instead, launched their own training company now called Team. Through studying, analyzing, and comparing, they asked the tough questions to determine what the best practices in the field were and what improvements could be implemented to take community building to the next level. After analyzing reams of data (gotta love those engineers), they realized that most people start and quit community building without even starting one person in their team! In an inspired "Eureka" moment, Orrin, with Chris's help, developed the Team Approach - a team building system where no one gets left behind. This approach ensured new members were apprenticed properly, with the focus on achieving mastery before building multiple legs. This simple, yet profound, change improved the growth within the team significantly. While company sales remained flat in the market, the Team went from 200 people at events to over 1,200 in the first year. By 2005, the Team was closing in on 15,000 people at its events. Having left GM in late 1998, Orrin's timing for the development of the Team Approach in early 1999 could not have been any better.
With this meteoric success, Orrin and Laurie were selected in 2003 to be keynote speakers, along with Dr. Phil and Rich DeVos, at the first Quixtar Live Event - a gathering of all the communities within the company. As a leader, Orrin began recognizing the problems in the business model, but rather than complain, he vowed to do something about it. This led to Orrin accepting a position on the IBOAI board in 2005. As a member of the board and the top North American field leader, Orrin felt a responsibility to confront the issues, communicate his concerns, and suggest viable fixes. This is what leadership is all about. Therefore, Orrin wrote a personal letter to the owner Doug DeVos pointing out the major problems he saw within the Amway/Quixtar business model.
In essence, Orrin's goal was to work from the inside to drive change and improve the company for everyone involved, both field and company leaders. But despite his nearly three years on the board attempting to make a difference, nothing really changed. Regretfully, in 2007, the DeVos family announced that Quixtar was ending, and all of their members would be re-joining Amway.
Because a leader's worth is his word, and Orrin had told thousands of people that Quixtar wasn't Amway (because that is what Quixtar's management team taught repeatedly), under no circumstances was Orrin going to force anyone to join Amway against his or her will, especially considering the fact that eight years prior, Orrin and his core team had intentionally quit Amway, and his new members had never been involved with Amway. In August of 2007, after numerous discussions and negotiations without a viable solution, Orrin Woodward and his leadership team exited Quixtar before its name change back to Amway.
Although Orrin preferred an amicable separation, the parting of ways resulted in nearly three years of litigation. Whistleblowers typically aren't loved at their former companies. With financial destruction at stake for everyone who stayed with Team, it was, without a doubt, the Team's finest hour. Thankfully for the Team, Dallin Larsen, 2008 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, agreed to give Team a home and wholeheartedly supported Team's right to freely choose its own product supplier. Dallin has become Orrin's close, personal friend, and Orrin is a lifetime user of the healthy, high quality products offered by MonaVie. Orrin and his team enjoy the health benefits and respect and value a leader who acts honorably towards the Team.
Many of the leadership lessons learned throughout the first ten years of community building were documented in the book Launching a Leadership Revolution (LLR), which Orrin co-wrote with Chris Brady. LLR captures the foundational principles of leadership communities and went on to become a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Business Weekly, and Money Magazine best seller. This book still sells briskly around the world, and Orrin and Chris donate 100 percent of the book royalties to the charity All Grace Outreach (AGO), which supports gospel organizations around the globe.
In 2011, Orrin fulfilled one of his biggest dreams when he and his seven business partners (Chris Brady, Tim Marks, Bill Lewis, Claude Hamilton, George Guzzardo, Dan Hawkins and Rob Hallstrand) co-founded and launched the LIFE business. After all of the trials and tribulations of the preceding three years, the LIFE Founders parlayed their passion, potential, and profits to launch the game-changing LIFE business compensation plan in a personal-development, community-building environment. The objective of LIFE is to provide an environment where people from all fields-doctors to ditch diggers, white collar to blue collar, and entrepreneurs to employees-can have the opportunity to change their lives for the better. Having studied the best and worst practices in FOUR separate fields (Personal Development, Leadership Development, Community Building, and Home-Based Businesses), the LIFE Founders combined the best principles of each into a new, unique business model. Imagine the possibilities. Eight experts, with nearly a century of combined business experience, teamed together to launch a brand new industry! And this isn't just theory. Since November 1, 2011, LIFE has been serving tens of thousands of business builders and subscription customers, and it continues to welcome thousands of new subscribers each month.
To foster growth, change, and the achievement of true happiness and success, LIFE launched it's most impactful and efficacious product yet in 2012: The Mental Fitness Challenge (MFC), a 90-Day Challenge program designed to "make-over" your mental fitness level for a lifetime. With testimonies of restored marriages, relationships, and finances rolling in daily, the MFC is one extremely powerful tool for transforming a person's life.
In addition to co-founding LIFE and co-producing the Mental Fitness Challenge, in 2011, Orrin completed his first solo book RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE, which spells out the resolutions for successful living taught in the Mental Fitness Challenge. Reading RESOLVED is a mental journey that leaves no one untouched. A culmination of forty-five years of experience, wisdom, and mentoring that has already changed thousands of people's lives for the better, RESOLVED is alive with life-altering examples of principles, precepts, and people whose lives are worthy of emulation. In late 2012, Michael McCaffery named Orrin Woodward's RESOLVED: 13 Resolutions for LIFE as one of the 100 Books to "Inspire Leadership and Create Movers and Shakers".
Orrin is the recipient of the 2011 Leadership Award by the Independent Association of Business (IAB)-a million plus member organization, is recognized in the Top 25 Leadership Gurus list, is a co-winner (along with Chris Brady) of GMI/Kettering's 2011 Entrepreneurial Achievement Award, and is the receiver of a host of blog and Twitter related awards and acknowledgements. Get to know Orrin better by visiting his highly popular leadership blog and perusing his social media sites.
Orrin lives in sunny Florida with his wife Laurie and their four children. Together, they enjoy a principle-centered lifestyle, volunteering their time and money to charitable projects (in 2011, Orrin & Laurie received the MORE Project Hands & Feet Award), mentoring families, speaking on stages across the world, fishing, reading, and writing. Essentially, they have been doing all the things that other people told them couldn't be done and have been happily living the life they've always wanted!