Bringing Nature’s Sunshine into the 21st Century

🧠 The Takeaways

Today, we’re taking Nature’s Sunshine private and bringing it into the 21st Century by…

1. Launching Meta ads + properly investing in Ecom.

2. Creating an Influencer academy for their army of independent sales reps.

3. Launching AI agents to make their sales reps more effective.

+ … Why ChatGPT has officially won my business.

LBAB! Community - Why I’m Going All In on ChatGPT

I’ve officially decided to make ChatGPT my primary AI tool for both business and personal use. 

After nearly three years of going back and forth between ChatGPT and Claude, these past couple of weeks have made the choice clear.

I’m canceling my Claude subscription and fully committing to ChatGPT for three main reasons.

1. Performance (Especially on Math-Heavy Tasks)

With GPT-5, ChatGPT has absolutely outperformed Claude—even in areas Claude should excel at. For example:

• Cohort retention analysis

• Messaging forecasts

• IRR sensitivity analysis

• Other advanced, math-heavy tasks

ChatGPT provided accurate results and step-by-step recommendations—some that I wanted, some I hadn’t even considered—that made my analysis significantly stronger. Meanwhile, Claude often struggled to even process the initial prompt.

2. Runaway Effects From Memory & Integration

ChatGPT’s memory is starting to compound across all my workflows—sales, marketing, support, fund analysis, and beyond. 

The more I use it, the more it integrates into my processes, and the harder it becomes to justify splitting my usage across multiple LLMs.

3. Better Execution Over Time

While ChatGPT sometimes requires more reminders than Claude, it executes tasks far better once you guide it with reasoning. Conversations become more productive, and its ability to “think through” tasks delivers higher-quality results.

4. Stronger Storage & Memory Capabilities

The memory and storage capabilities are now so advanced that I’m seeing real compounding benefits. The more I feed into it, the better it becomes. At this stage, it feels almost irresponsible to dilute my inputs by spreading them across different platforms.

My Next Steps

• ChatGPT is now the only LLM tab I keep open on my computer.

• I’ve added the app to my phone for the first time, replacing Claude entirely.

• It’s now my main go-to tool for both personal and business tasks.

Over the next six months, as ChatGPT keeps improving and my usage deepens, I expect the benefits to compound even further—making it increasingly difficult to switch away in the future.

Let’s Examine This Biz

Note: As always, none of what follows is legal, tax, investing, financial, or any other sort of advice. And I was never here.

Nature’s Sunshine, the 51 year old MLM Supplements brand that went public during COVID, returning to its IPO price.

• Share price: $16.54

• Market Cap: $291m

• L5 Performance: +5%

• P/E Ratio: 38x

This biz spends 68% of its revenues on SG&A for its team + Sales network. Squandering an incredible 71% Gross Margin on a biz model that should have died 30 years ago.

Financial Summary

2025 Financial Statements (YoY Comparison)

Sales: $454m (+2%) 😐
Gross Profits: $324m (+1%) 😐
OPEX: $304m (+1%) 😐

Net Income: $7m (-49%) 😰😰 

Link to Company’s earnings

TLDR Analysis: Teetering on the edge

• Rev is flat for 4 years. 😟

• OPEX at 68% is crushing this biz’s dream of a profit. 🥺

• Net Income is bouncing between breakeven & unprofitable. 😰

It’s shocking that a Utahn biz sees 46% of their Rev come from Asia + only 31% from North America.

This is a perfect ex of a biz that hasn’t adapted to the times and hasn’t undergone the great technological innovations. They should be a massive eCom Supplements machine. But they’re still selling their products through an MLM. 

It’d be so easy to double this biz.

Let’s Fix This Biz

Here are my 3 moves to launch this 51-year-old biz into the 21st century and to $1B.

1) Reduce OPEX through eCom

I consistently say how few global purchases actually run through eCom. Nature’s Sunshine is the perfect example.

The majority of their sales still come from their Seller network (essentially an MLM).

While they have an eCom presence and are on Amazon, guess how many times either was mentioned in their earnings report?

0x.

Their Sales Network, or “Independent Consultants”? 

106x.

We don’t need to do anything crazy here. We can run the DTC playbook:

1. Scale Amazon.

2. Launch Meta ads.

3. Get customers on Subscribe & Save.

Not even necessarily to scale to new heights—though I believe it would.

But to reduce the OPEX costs associated with the sales network. Like Tupperware.

Volume incentives currently account for 34% of Rev. At scale, we’ll spend about the same on Meta ads but at a much higher Revenue.

Takeaway: There’s still plenty of old school bizs out there.

2) Build the Influencer Training academy

MLMs were the original Influencer/Affiliate marketing. Nature’s Sunshine has the perfect opportunity to convert their army of evangelical sales reps.

But they have to flip from house visits and phone calls to using Social media.

Start with jr reps, then train them up to become master Influencers across Instagram, TikTok, YouTube.

The triple sided benefit of building the “academy:”

• Sell more

• Bring more people in to sell the products

• Control massive campaigns across all sellers

Similar to how McDonald’s has a Franchisee training program to turn their best location managers into McMasters. 

Nature’s Sunshine has the same opportunity. Especially with their large Asian presence. They can take popular trends in China, South Korea, and Japan and bring them elsewhere.

Takeaway: Internal Influencers can be just as powerful as external ones.

3)  Launch AI Sales agents for Independent contractors

We won’t lay off the sales team overnight. Let’s focus on making them ruthlessly efficient. 

If we focus on the Top 20% of "independent consultants,” we’ll see an explosion of profits as the same resources 80-20 the topline.

The 2 things that slow every great salesperson down:

1. Admin work

2. Not enough pipeline

There are dozens of AI for sales teams. We’ll roll them out for Nature’s Sunshine.

1. Deal tracking

2. Notes/follow-ups

3. Renewal reminders

4. Invoices + Collections

5. Sourcing, Prospecting, Referrals from clients.

All will get an agent. The top reps will get trained on how to use these agents and can update each one themselves.

When we  reduce each top rep’s busy work by 10–20%, sales will have a double bounce from more time + motivation.

Takeaway: Remove the Top 20%’s work and watch teams increase output by 30-50%.

Final Thought

I’m always curious if these are the best bizs in the age of AI or not.

While we love to be technology-driven and automate everything (which comes with much better margins) will this type of hand-to-hand biz thrive?

Any time there’s a massive new trend driven by technology, there’s also a massive backlash to it and a reinvigoration in the craftsman economy.

We have mocked and looked down on MLMs for 20 years now, but what if personal networks are the greater sales lever that customers prefer as everything becomes agentic?

I’m not sure MLMs have the right branding to be a “trusted source” vs. an agent, but consumers have always bought from their networks and the people they KLT (Know, Like and Trust).

Maybe, just maybe, this type of network-based sales motion will actually be a massive win by “keeping the human connection.”