Adam May: Forever’s first ever Diamond Sapphire Eagle Manager

Diamond Sapphire Manager Adam May has been a Forever Business Owner since the early nineties. He is part of the Global Leadership Team (GLT), he’s a phenomenal businessman, and he’s one of the most successful FBOs in the world. Recently he achieved a position that no FBO in the entire Forever global family has ever reached before – Adam achieved Diamond Sapphire EAGLE Manager.

The Eagle Manager incentive is a programme that Forever is particularly passionate about. It teaches FBOs to build stable and deep foundations so that their business can remain grounded. Gregg Maughan, Forever’s President, says, “If you build something deep and well-grounded then, when your business goes through hard times, losing a few leaves won’t disrupt your core.” Building strong foundations is crucial and doing so will impact the longevity of your business. Adam May is a businessman through and through and he aimed for Eagle because he knew that his business needed to be firmly planted on solid ground. Forever’s Editor, Kate Hodge, caught up with Adam to hear his story and how he reached this monumental milestone…

HOW DID YOU DISCOVER FOREVER?

After leaving university I went to work in the city; I was a broker for seven years (and I did that successfully for those seven years) but it was a typical cash-rich time-poor lifestyle. I decided I wanted to run my own business and a couple of colleagues and I set up a financial services business. It was just after the financial crash of the early 1990s when interest rates peaked at 16%, and it really was a terrible time to set up a financial services business. After two-and-a-half years that business went bust and I lost absolutely everything – literally everything. I had to go back and get a job working for someone else, which was dreadful, especially as I was used to being my own boss.

At around the same time a friend invited me to go along and look at an opportunity. I was just blown away – I could see the numbers. The thing about network marketing is that people think it’s more complicated than it is, but it’s simply geometrical progression. I saw this model, about a lot of people doing a little bit, and I realised that as long as you keep it simple, duplication could occur very quickly and give you this fantastic income. 

I signed up with the company (the company was not Forever) and I did this for two years before falling out of love with that company. I had however fallen in love with the industry.

After leaving, I carried out my own research and I found Forever. It was just a fit. I liked the products, I liked the company, but more than anything else I liked the ethics. I got started back in August 1993 and I was part-time for the first two years – I found about fifteen hours a week alongside my busy full-time job – and within six months my income was over £2,000 a month; within twenty-one months it was over £5,000 per month and this gave me the confidence to go full-time. This was in July 1995.

I didn’t take a single day’s holiday in those first two years; every single holiday day I took I used to build my Forever business. People often ask me whether it was difficult working the business alongside my full-time job, and I suppose it must have been, but I can’t remember that because I have such a fantastic lifestyle now. I get an income from a substantial number of countries, I’ve qualified for Level 3 Chairman’s Bonus and I’ve just been recognised as the first ever Diamond Sapphire Eagle Manager in the world.

I’m so proud of my team and I’m also proud to be a part of team UK; we’ve been the number one country for the past two years now and it’s great that we’ve now got another first.

WAS ACHIEVING DIAMOND SAPPHIRE EAGLE MANAGER A DIFFICULT PROCESS?

It definitely wasn’t easy. I was privileged enough to be in the original meetings when the Eagle Manager programme was first discussed (six years ago) and when it was structured all of us that were in the higher positions knew that it would be difficult to achieve. As a Diamond Sapphire Manager I needed ten separate downline legs with an Eagle Manager in each, so I knew it was going to be challenging.

I’ve always believed that leaders should qualify for everything, whether you are going to get recognised for it or not. For the first two years of the Eagle programme I saw everyone going off to Sardinia and Lake Tahoe and I was a bit upset that I wasn’t able to qualify. I had done the qualification myself – the Eagle Manager part – but I only had eight legs not the ten I needed. In 2014 and 2015 I qualified to go to EMR because I was a part of the GLT, but I wasn’t an Eagle. In January of this year I received a call from Aidan O’Hare, Executive Vice President of Europe and Marketing, and he told me that the Home Office in Arizona had crunched the numbers and it looked as if this year I was going to do it; I could have ten legs. So off I went, working deep within my downline and every few weeks Aidan and I would catch up to see how I was doing. On the last day of April, the final day of the qualification period, I asked for the numbers to be crunched again – but I didn’t have ten legs; I had eleven!

WHAT DOES AN AVERAGE WORKING WEEK LOOK LIKE FOR YOU NOW?

I still focus on sponsoring people myself – I think that it is really important, if you want to stay relevant, to be at the coalface – and I still do a lot of learning. You are either green and growing or ripe and rotting and I prefer to be green and growing so I’m always reading, looking at YouTube clips or listening to audio books. There are so many great things that we have access to that inspire us, help us with our personal development and help us with network marketing; the day you think you know it all is the day your business starts to shrink!

I also do a lot of work within my team. I do a lot of coaching, Skype calls, launches, and I still do one-to-ones; in fact, I don’t really do anything differently from someone who is new to the business. I’ve been in the business for nearly twenty-three years but people are working their way up far faster than I did.

The one thing I would say though is make sure that you are building a strong business, not just a business.

SO WHY IS ACHIEVING EAGLE MANAGER SO IMPORTANT?

Eagle Manager is important because it gives new Managers a stepping stone to Chairman’s Bonus and Global Rally; it helps new Managers to build their business. You can’t achieve Eagle until you have achieved Manager, and Manager requires three to four months of consistent activity and about twenty-five people in your team. To achieve Eagle Manager you have to do 720CCs in the calendar year (1st May – 30th April), 100 of these case credits have to be from newly-sponsored FBOs and you have to develop at least two Supervisors in your downline. If you do that you’ll be going on the Eagle Managers’ Retreat, wherever it is. Part of the criteria for Chairman’s Bonus is that you have to achieve 700 non-Manager case credits, 150 of which must come from newly-sponsored FBOs. In addition you need at least one Manager in your downline that has achieved sales of 600CC. If you don’t have this Manager, at least if you have achieved Eagle Manager you are part way there. Then, when you do eventually get a Manager beneath you doing 600CC, you will achieve Chairman’s Bonus as well as Eagle. Forever is so clever to put in these stepping stones that encourage continual business development.

Every Manager, no matter what their position, should be doing what they need to do to achieve the Eagle Manager part of the qualification. It doesn’t matter if you don’t qualify for EMR, but you need to be able to look all your team in the eye and say, ‘I did my bit’. If you keep doing it, one day you will qualify.

WHAT CAN PEOPLE EXPECT TO GET OUT OF THE EAGLE MANAGERS’ RETREAT (EMR)?

I don’t think people should treat it as a holiday; it is a working trip. You can always extend the trip to make it a holiday, Forever will pay for your flights and you’ll just have to pay for your extra accommodation, but EMR should be viewed as an opportunity to mix with the best of the best. It’s one of the few times you can get up close and personal with GLT members, Level 3 Chairman’s Bonus cheque qualifiers and other high achieving people in Forever, not to mention Rex, Gregg and Aidan!

This is an opportunity to receive trainings from some of the top Forever Business Owners in the world; a chance to gain the knowledge you need in order to springboard your business to the next level – that’s why it is so important.

So I have a question for you all: if you’re not qualifying for Eagle, how many more times are you going to look at the live stream on your laptop while everyone else is at the Eagle Managers’ Retreat or Global Rally? How many Facebook posts are you going to ‘like’ on other people’s walls about all the fun they are having while you’re stuck at home? Set your sights on Manager, and then Eagle, and then keep going from there. If I can do it, anyone can do it.

Rex has made this a level playing field; anyone can be successful in Forever. It doesn’t matter what your background is as Forever does not discriminate against age, sex, religion, ethnicity or education. It’s an equal opportunity and we all have access to this same opportunity. A few years ago I heard this saying which was, ‘The price of discipline weighs ounces, but the price of regret weighs tons’. Please don’t waste this opportunity; it really could change yours and your family’s life, forever.

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