Brand loyalty is the future, but it’s also the past. We used to know and love our neighborhood baker, butcher, milkman, farmer, and physician. The world has changed and we’ve all been ‘burned’ by bad brands…so when you find excellence and integrity in one company, why wouldn’t you stick with them?
I have more than one post explaining why I love dōTERRA, but this one is especially about my personal choice to join dōTERRA and support their vision.
To be honest, I had been on the fence for a while. I knew from just a few samples that dōTERRA had better essential oils, but I still doubted whether that warranted the dramatic difference between dōTERRA prices and other brands. And then there was the question of getting a membership. Could it really be worth the hassle…and the cost?
Being the pseudo-journalist and information-monger that I am, I started digging, fully expecting to find dirt…but, instead, I found flowers. Okay that was a terrible pun. I was pleasantly surprised.
My Top 3 Reasons for Choosing dōTERRA
- Loving, Sincere Culture (people FIRST!)
- Labor Trafficking
- Unmatched Quality
dōTERRA prizes relationship, community, and whenever possible, one-to-one mentorship. They go out of their way to help customers and Wellness Advocates like me develop through training and ongoing education…so that YOU get excellent service.
1. People & Company Culture
Love, love, love heals all! In my experience, I am not the only Wellness Advocate who really, deeply, passionately cares about families lives and wellbeing.
Whereas many direct sales/network marketing companies spend a lot of time talking about cash and car rewards, you mostly hear dōTERRA’s people talking about the amazing essential oils, helping people to heal and live well, and the humanitarian work they do around the world.
Incidentally, many in the community are Certified Essential Oil Coaches and practitioners (like me), Naturopathic Doctors, Medical Doctors, Massage Therapists, Yoga Instructors, Health Journalists (also like me), Fitness Professionals (yup, me, too) and of course Moms, Dads, Farmers, Teachers, Actors, Singers, “Crunchies,” and just flat Smart Wellness Enthusiasts!
I jumped on board because I’m smart! doTERRA invests their own money to fund research, trailblazing for us now and generations to come in a society that has otherwise lost touch with simple, effective and nontoxic plant based medicine! It saves money and injury, and often does a better job overall because essential oils don’t mask symptoms but work from root problems…
…but I’m getting ahead of myself.
doTERRA has also opened the first medical clinic run by “real” doctors with real MDs…who are knowledgeable of essential oils and ready to integrate essential oils when plant-based medicine can do the job better, or just as well…
…because…a) no toxicity or side-effects, and b) huge $avings.
When you join dōTERRA with me, I will give you the same amazing mentorship and support I was given. It’s just the way it goes here. The object is truly to spread the wealth — in knowledge, in health, in friendship, and in finances (for anyone who wants to spread the word and share oils, you can also earn bonus checks).
“There are givers and there are takers. We wanted dōTERRA to be a giver.”
–David Stirling, Co-Founder
It Takes a Village: Personalized support
Why would you need ongoing support (aka a “Wellness Advocate”)?
When you walk into a health food store or land on a website and find the essential oils “aisle,”do you feel pretty confident you know exactly what to reach for to meet your needs? Do you know which ones are amazing for relieving a headache…which is best for heartburn…for fever…for pneumonia, flu or cold…for skincare…for hormonal balance?
Or if you had a collection of essential oils in your house, would you know what to do with each oil and blend? If you’re anything like I was when I first got started, chances are good you’d have no CLUE what to do with essential oils! They are beautiful and precious, and you’ve heard they are awesome…but they’ll do no good in a cabinet left unopened.
Lavender smells nice and you’ve heard it goes great in a nighttime pillow spray. What you may not know is that it’s the #1 go-to essential oil for burns of any kind to soothe the pain, lessen redness and inflammation, help the skin heal faster and prevent scarring. That goes for sunburn, chemical burn, rug burn, any burn!
Couple Lavender with a drop of one or two other CPTG oils like Tea Tree & Frankincense, and you’ve got a powerful, non-toxic, skin-healing burn remedy that also helps to soothe the nervous system, calm emotions, and stimulate healthy immunity.
I haven’t even scratched the surface of how you can use Lavender to improve your life, beauty, health and first-aid kit.
That’s why you need ongoing support.
If you don’t need support, call me. You should be on my team helping me help more families.
Together, we empower families and individuals to save money and improve their health safely, naturally and more effectively than with drugs or other invasive, harmful therapies.
Don’t get me wrong. Modern-day medicine and procedures have their place. We’re not teaching people to completely replace but to integrate.
Bottom line: When you enroll with dōTERRA you get more than the highest quality essential oils and products on the market. You also inherit a personal Wellness Advocate who will make it their business to help you find what you personally need to grow and enhance your wellness journey—for life!
doTERRA Co-Impact Sourcing empowering communities in Nepal
2. Non-Exploitation, Fair Wages, High Ethical Standards
Recently, many have awoken to the reality of human labor trafficking and the role our wealthy nations have played in it.
There is simply no industry untouched by human trafficking, and every single one of us has contributed to it, know it or not. It’s heart wrenching…and even when we know, we rarely know what we can do to stop it…
…but when we can do something…
…WE MUST DO SOMETHING.
Many of the growers who provide the plants, fruits and flowers that become our beautiful essential oils are raising families in poor communities in developing countries. These are often the poorest of the poor.
dōTERRA is investing in families, developing strategic partnerships with them to ensure long-term success for the business and job stability for the growers.
Even more importantly, by paying the cost to do what is fair and right, they are leading the way against exploitation. In their own words:
Eighteen of the 26 countries dōTERRA sources essential oils from would be considered developing countries. Many of these countries face economic and environmental challenges that prevent their citizens from having a better quality of life. dōTERRA developed the Co-Impact Sourcing approach as an answer to many of these challenges.
Co-Impact Sourcing has long been a vision that dōTERRA has aspired to fulfill. Through this program, dōTERRA can not only ensure a long-term supply of CPTG essential oils from dedicated partners, but also improve the livelihoods of the small-scale family farmers…
dōTERRA works directly with growers to…ensure fair and timely payments. These partnerships help improve livelihoods by providing job opportunities, training, and various Healing Hands funded projects.
“There are givers and there are takers. We wanted dōTERRA to be a giver.” –David Stirling=
I am thankful for companies like dōTERRA who are standing on high ground so that when you and I purchase from them, we can say, too, that we stand against labor trafficking and for human rights with them. As the man says in the video below, it’s a win/win/win situation, as it should be!
3. Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade
A picture or, in this case, a pie chart says a thousand words. The “synthetic” oils area in gray (see image above) takes up most of the pie, and it represents the majority of so-called essential oils on the market.
These have no natural or therapeutic value. Scientists have tried, but even when they can reproduce the identified compounds in an essential oil, they are unable to produce a real essential oil. Amazing!
Food grade essential oils are frequently used for flavorings. They are low quality and do not have therapeutic value. Keep in mind that red 40 and yellow 5 are considered “food grade,” and they obviously do not come from a plant in the ground but a chemistry lab. That is, food grade can be artificial, and doesn’t have to actually…be…food. We’ve learned over the years that what the FDA “generally recognizes as safe” can be toxic, yes in our food and cosmetics (partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, anyone?).
Therapeutic grade essential oils have recently increased on the market, and that is a good thing! However, standardized testing for potency, i.e. therapeutic value, is apart from purity testing.
There are essential oils on the market which are therapeutic grade but are not certified pure…
…or might be free of contaminants, but not potent (i.e. “therapeutic”).
Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade (CPTG) is doTERRA’s trademark for a rigorous, third-party standardized testing that ensures purity and potency for every single batch and every bottle.
Are there a few other brands that strive for excellence? I sure hope so! But I do not know of anyone going to these lengths to ensure both purity and potency, bottle for bottle and drop for drop. It’s an expensive process. If any batch is found wanting in either purity or highest potency, it is discarded at dōTERRA’s expense. That’s for real!
Here is the official statement from dōTERRA’s website:
“The term ‘CPTG Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade®’ sounds technical, official, and impressive; and it is. Without an accepted standard for essential oil quality, dōTERRA created its own, the most stringent in the industry, to certify that there are no added fillers, synthetic ingredients, or harmful contaminants in their essential oils that would reduce their efficacy. dōTERRA even goes a step further, putting all their products and the packaging through a battery of tests to ensure a long and effective shelf-life. Utilizing its own facilities, as well as trusted third-party labs, each batch of dōTERRA essential oils goes through the extensive three-step CPTG process before it is made available for sale to ensure that the product you receive is of the highest quality, every time.”