A Profile of Success: Aida de Villa

An ounce of persistence is worth a ton of success. And when one’s persistence is coupled with hard work, surely, success will beckon.

Such is the case of Aida De Villa. Aida is a retired Landbanker who ventured into a totally uncharted and unfamiliar business endeavor in her retirement years. In 2015, at the age of 48, after almost 27 years of service with Landbank, she opted for early retirement. She initially thought of putting up a small accounting and auditing firm to put to good use her years of Landbank experience and expertise as CPA. For the entire first year of her retirement, she was able to do just that. Her modest company had some cooperatives as clients that she had liaised with during her stint at the Bank’s Financial Institutions Department and NCR-Lending Department.

But Fate had other, and better, plans. In January 2016, a former Landbank colleague enticed her to try her hand as distributor of USANA products. While she initially balked at the idea, she eventually gave in to her friend’s prodding, thinking it will just be a side hustle to her small but flourishing accounting firm. But as she learned the ropes of distributorship of USANA products, she was starting to like it. She loves the personal growth that she was achieving while doing the business. She learned how to think as an entrepreneur. Slowly she began to unleash her leadership potentials. What adds up to the fun in doing her USANA business is that she gets to meet different people in the course of marketing her products. And of course, the financial gains are nothing to be scoffed at. The commissions are in greenbacks ($$$), plus she gets some travel perks. She has so far visited the following places: Cebu, Boracay, El Nido-Palawan and Singapore. She is looking forward to a Japan trip with her daughter, Danica, happening in January 2023 which was recently given to her as Leadership Summit Awardee, having completed not less than $7,800 income in 13 weeks. She has been working for this for the past 3 years. There were many challenges along the way but she persisted and worked hard and eventually got her reward. She did not only achieve the USANA Leadership Summit but became an Executive Gold Director (hurdling a 13-week run for a total of $13,000 income) and eventually her rank advanced to Ruby Director (with a 4-week run of at least $2,000 per week) before the end of 2022. For these achievements, travel also awaits her to the beautiful Discovery Shores Boracay, South Korea, Dubai and Athens, Greece this 2023.

Admittedly, USANA products are a bit pricey. But since USANA is a pre-sold brand, it was not very difficult to market these. In fact, it was during the pandemic that her sales peaked up. USANA is selling wellness and a healthy lifestyle; and people are just willing to pay any price to achieve their body’s wellness and maintain a healthy lifestyle.

What she most needed then was to continue to grow herself as an entrepreneur and leader, train her downlines and stress to them the values of hard work and teamwork. And this is where her knowledge and learnings she gained in all the seminars and trainings she attended in her years at Landbank come in. She meets her associates and gives seminars on leadership and teamwork.

It paid off and for this she is grateful to Landbank for molding her into a leader that she is today. She helped her people achieve their targets and, in the process, she also gets to achieve hers.

Her husband also helps in her distributorship business; in fact, he already joined her team and both help each other to grow their business which they consider their Legacy Business for their children because someday they can inherit and continue this USANA business which is one of the business’ unique features.

But like most start-up businesses, Aida had some birth pains. It was fortunate though that Countryside Builders Multi-Purpose Cooperative, of which she has been a member since January 2020, was there to help her go through the initial difficulties of her business. First, she needed some gadgets to get her business going especially when online meetings with her people and clients was the norm. She was able to avail of business and gadgets loans for her to be able to purchase the needed laptop and other electronic gadgets to communicate with her people and clients. Second, she was also able to avail of other business loans to help her in her inventory which made it easier for her to service the requirements of her clients especially during the height of pandemic. She is ever grateful to CBMPC for being there to help her realize her dreams as an entrepreneur.

With her natural leadership qualities and a keen business sense, Aida is blazing her way through.