I'd start by asking, "Can you answer these questions about your essential oils?"

• I know how my essential oils are tested.

• I know how my oils are sourced.

• I know the practices of the company where I buy my oils from. I know the farmers and artisans are being paid fair wages and have a safe environment for their work.

• I know the company I buy my oils from will stand behind their product.

If you aren’t able to answer these questions about your essential oils. Then keep reading this time I'll answer each of those statements. [Warning it's a bit long, but it's only the beginnings of WHY I LOVE doTERRA!]

The doTERRA difference.

• I know how my essential oils are tested.

doTERRA runs multiple tests on their oils. They don’t just test for purity, but adulteration. It requires extra testing to make sure you catch all the different ways that oils can be adulterated! doTERRA goes above and beyond with over 10 different tests we run on our oils! Majority of competitors claim scientific testing but typically only perform 1 test (GC/MS) whereas dōTERRA does GC/MS plus many more!

doTERRA also tests for potency and the correct chemical makeup of your oil! If you are using oils for as an antifungal you want to make sure that chemical constituent is present and in the correct amount to do what you want it to do! Purity and potency matter!

Finally, we don’t just spot batch test our oils! We test each and every batch! We don’t just in-house test! We have multiple third party testers! This testing produces our Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade of essential oils...that no other company has!

doTERRA will reject any batch of essential oil that does not meet our high quality and standard...this means only the purest oil ends up in your home!

When picking an essential oil company you should be able to CLEARLY see and know how they test. The company should be straightforward with their testing! If they are not, you may or may not be using pure oils.

You (and I) NEED to be able to trust the oils we have. To be able to depend on them. That they are what they say they are. It's critical.

• • CPTG - doTERRAs highest standard

  • Testing Process (Video)

doTERRA has grabbed the attention of many in the medical field. We have been able to partner with over 100 researchers, scientists, doctors, and hospitals! We are a research and education company...which again sets us apart! (Including Roseman University!)

Check out this amazing video about some of our research partners and how doctors and hospitals are using essential oils!

• I know how my oils are sourced

When sourcing oils you want to find the ideal conditions for the essential oil you are sourcing. Just like we’d rather have our oranges from Florida versus Illinois, doTERRA seeks to find the best growing conditions to have the correct chemical makeup of the essential oils they are sourcing.

Sure you can grow some plants anywhere, but the soil, weather, and other factors play a role in the type of chemical makeup of essential oil it will produce! doTERRA is leading the way in finding areas globally that help them responsibly source the highest quality of essential oil. doTERRA looks for to secure their supply of essential oils for years to come.

doTERRA has exclusive long term contracts with farmers and sourcing partners that secures our exclusive rights to their essential oils. Corey Lindley, President and CFO, explained that this means that these farmers are only selling their oils to our essential oil company. They can not sell their product to another essential oil company!

This means our oils are not the same oils you will find from other companies! If someone claims their oils are the same as doTERRA, you can rest assure that is not the case!

Let me give you a couple of examples:

We source Douglas Fir from New Zealand and we have exclusive rights on this sourcing! What’s so cool is Douglas Fir in New Zealand is like a weed! It grows 25X faster than anything else there and once a tree grows tall, nothing can grow under it. So it has become a real issue for the landscape of New Zealand.

doTERRA is able to go in and cut down the younger trees, before they get their cones (which produces more Douglas Fir trees) and help responsibly source the essential oil. ALSO when you harvest a younger Douglas Fir tree you get a richer and better chemistry of the Douglas Fir oil! It’s a real WIN/WIN!

Another example is our Arborvitae essential oil we source from Canada. We again are the only essential oil company that is able to get the essential oil from this tree. The lumber company used to burn the waste of the arborvitae tree, but now we sustainably source this essential oil and can benefit from its amazing properties!

Did you know the amount of work that goes into sustainable sourcing. doTERRA refuses to cut corners to save a buck! We want our oils to be sources from the best locations with the most responsibility sourcing methods! When we look at what oils we use, we want to know that the habitat is not being destroyed and that there are responsible methods being used.

doTERRA has an amazing sourcing team! This team has grown over the years and has folks with all sorts of degrees: chemistry, economics, business (supply chain experts), agriculture and more! It’s a diverse team of men and women!

What does this team do?

• Travels the world to connect with farmers globally

• Informs farmers of our fair and ethical standards

• Works around the clock to make sure we’re staying ahead of the sourcing needs

• Works to create long term exclusive partnerships with growers

• Works with the mindset of several years down the road and what the demand will be

• They work to find sourcing of the same oil in different parts of the world. This way if there was a natural catastrophe in one part of the world, another supply would be safe.

• Ensure that we are not doing any long term damage to wild harvest plants. (What does that mean...keep reading!)

There are plants that if overharvested will be unable to produce (Frankincense, Myrrh, Tree oils, Spikenard). Blue Tansy is an example of an oil our sourcing team took from wild harvest and brought it into a commercial farm to relieve the pressure. Now smaller commercial farmers grow Blue Tansy to get oil quality but we are also not contributing to plants not being able to regeneration of plants. Plant species can go extinct and the team works to insure this doesn’t happen with wild harvest plants. They will continue to monitor plants by being responsible and not over harvesting! This is the doTERRA difference!

Another amazing story from Matt, on our sourcing team, is he spent a summer living in a sleeping bag, in Somaliland, to secure a sustainable and responsible sourcing of our Frankincense oil! That’s mind-blowing!

When it comes to the stories of our sourcing team it is riveting to hear some of the amazing things they do to ensure that farmers and growers will work with us, have safe work environments and responsibility source our oils for years to come!

In Bulgaria farmers used to work with brokers or middle men. The broker would take the farmer's crop to a distillery and then these middle men would choose how much money their crop is worth. Pretty shady! (Actually, most essential oil companies use brokers versus working directly with the farmers, not cool! Please only buy your oils from a company who stand against this practice!)

doTERRA has their own testing and distillation facility in Bulgaria. So the farmer brings his own crop, we distil it, while the farmer waits, then we test for quality and if it meets our standard we pay them electronically so the money hits their bank account before they even leave! We have farmers coming from everywhere to work with us! Amazing!

Let’s go to the Amazon! We source our Copaiba oil from the Amazon. In a short period of time we were able to create enough jobs for hundreds of new farmers to keep up with the demand of Copaiba! We source 4 different species of Copaiba to make sure the chemistry of the oil provides the results we want! With this demand for supply….that’s a lot of new jobs at fair market wages! Again another WIN/WIN!

doTERRA works with almost 100,000 farmers globally and the financial impact is nearly half a million people! It’s truly a massive effort to bring the highest quality essential oil to our homes! When you use doTERRA essential oils in your home, you are helping the quality of life of thousands!

While we search the globe for the highest quality essential oil, we are working in over 25 developing countries! This gives us a chance to not only partner with farmers and growers, but actually help make a difference in the lives of these farmers, their families and whole communities!

Co-Impact sourcing is a topic I could talk about all day! Because this is the HEART of doTERRA! We don’t just want to take from these farmers in developing countries, we want to give back! We also provide fair and on time payments, which for some of these growers is a brand new concept!

This is all about Co-Impact Sourcing and the difference it's making in the lives of our farmers and thier communities.

Let’s start with our first initiative!

doTERRA launched its Co-Impact Sourcing Initiative in the Haitian commune of Les Cayes, by starting a cooperative for raw materials. The Co-Impact Sourcing Initiative in Haiti aims to solve the issue of disorganization among farmers, by forming cooperatives for growers in the area.

These cooperatives provide training for growers, which will allow them to produce high-quality Vetiver oil. With the help of an exclusive distiller partner, doTERRA also established a fair payment schedule for the farmers, allowing them to receive payment during all stages of production—planting, pre-harvest, and harvest.

Also, a mature and high quality Vetiver plant takes 14 months to produce the quality of essential oil that passes the doTERRA standard. In order to make sure farmers do not harvest too early, doTERRA pays them monthly so they are earning an income throughout those 14 months versus just when the oil is ready!

When you open your bottle of frankincense do you know the beautiful story of how that oils is sourced?

First, frankincense is sourced in one of the most harsh regions of Somalia! This isn’t an easy location for a variety of reasons, but it produces some of the highest quality of frankincense. If you have experienced frankincense it is an oil you don’t want to be without!

The doTERRA Co-Impact Sourcing Initiative provides frankincense harvesters with fair wages and on-time payments (including food and cash prepayments spread out during the year) by working around the layers of middlemen and instead working directly with those who harvest and sort the frankincense. This arrangement provides a much more stable and reliable income to frankincense harvesters. doTERRA is also working with our partners to ensure that the cleaning and sorting of the frankincense resins takes place as close to the harvesting locations as possible so that these important jobs (typically held by women) remain in rural areas where they are most needed and benefit the harvesting families. Our initiative also ensures that these women receive fair wages and that they are able to work in more favorable working conditions.

doTERRA is also partnered with “Conserve the Cal Madow” which is working to insure the very best harvesting practices for our frankincense trees. This initiative is tagging trees to make sure we are not over harvesting and therefore destroying our beautiful frankincense trees.

Here’s an overview of Co-Impact Sourcing Principles:

• Generate Jobs

• Fair and On Time Payment

• Building Supplier Capacity

• Sustain Long-Term Partnerships

• Fair Labor Conditions

• Promote Cooperatives

• Environmental Stewardship

• Healing Hands Community Development

This is the Tip of the Iceberg. Check out Source to You for EVEN MORE information!

• I know the practices of the company where I buy my oils from.

In addition to Co-Impact Sourcing. You need to know about doTERRA's transparency and their global partners. Partnerships with organizations like the Healing Hands Foundation.

In order to build schools, dig wells, send medical personnel to these areas where we source our oils, partner with Wellness Advocates, and so much more….doTERRA set up Healing Hands Foundation.

Healing Hands Foundations has a tri-fold focus:

1. Global Partners

2. Wellness Advocate Partnerships

3. Co-Impact Sourcing Projects

Throughout the day we will focus on these three different ways doTERRA is making sure to give back in big and bold ways!

doTERRA also is fiscally transparent. Every dollar donated goes to one of the Healing Hands Projects. Here is a copy of their yearly and fiscal report.

Our global partnerships will pull at your heart more than anything that’s been shared so far!

Operation Underground Railroad (OUR) is a doTERRA global partner. OUR is on the front line of human trafficking! They go to locations that are hot zones of sex trafficking, saving children and young adults from a life of slavery! 100% of the sale of our HOPE blend oil goes directly to OUR. This is an organization on the front lines of ending modern day slavery! www.ourrescue.com

To provide prevention and education about the sex slave industry, doTERRA has partnered with 3 Golden Strands that utilizes an educational program called PROTECT which helps teachers know how to have conversations with their students about sex trafficking. https://www.3strandsglobalfoundation.org/

We also partner with Rapha House. Their mission: Is to end the trafficking and sexual exploitation of children through aftercare for survivors, prevention for the vulnerable, and awareness for all. Through safe houses, kids clubs, training & reintegration, and awareness they are fulfilling their mission! https://raphahouse.org/

Do you know a number of young women are shamed when they have their normal menstrual cycle? Do you know how many can’t attend school during their cycle because of lack of access to material to support their periods? Days for Girls is changing that! We partner with Days for Girls to provide quality, sustainable feminine hygiene supplies paired with education - empowering girls in developing countries with the support needed to attend school & work consistently - resulting in more opportunities to grow, thrive and contribute to society. www.daysforgirls.org

Our final global partner is: Mentors International. They are providing loans to small businesses who do not otherwise have the ability to obtain financing. Helping people in developing countries lift themselves out of extreme poverty by giving them a hand up - not a hand out.

Micro Loan programs that include mentorships, business training, and financial services - helping people turn their hard work into independence and self-confidence, ensuring their families immediate needs are supported so they have a solid foundation to build a future.

https://doterrahealinghands.org/micro-loan-projects

• I know the company I buy my oils from will stand behind their product.

When you buy directly from doTERRA they stand behind their oils and products! Very few companies stand behind their products as much as doTERRA!

If you choose to buy off a third party site, doTERRA cannot guarantee the purity of their oils. Because doTERRA is leading the way in the essential oil market, there have been many who are adulterting and selling “doTERRA oils” from their website. (Yes, buying the oils, adulterating them and reselling!) This is not the heart of doTERRA. With the amount of work that goes into each bottle we recommend you buy directly from doTERRA to avoid impure or unethical selling practices!

Because of doTERRA’s quality and commitment to your satisfaction, we have a wonderful return policy! We hope you never have to use the policy, but it shows the commitment doTERRA has to your total satisfaction of their oils!

You can receive a full refund on your unopened products returned within 30 days! If you open your oils you can still receive 100% in product credits or 90% refund!

With our supplements we also have a 30 day money back guarantee! If you do not have more energy and less pain taking the supplements, you can send them back empty for a full refund! This is why we buy from doTERRA and they fully stand behind their products, which is so reassuring!

If you aren’t able to answer these questions about your essential oils. Then consider doTERRA or look for another company that you can feel comfortable knowing has your back.