WHY I CHOSE YOUNG LIVING OVER DOTERRA
I sat one day and asked myself…What is my purpose in life? What is my calling? At some point I knew I needed to change things in my life but it had be authentic. Then I came across a gentleman who is a life coach. He said, “Look at your life. Is there is something that you have gone through that you can share with people that most have never been through? Something difficult you encountered so extreme and life changing that you didn’t think you would get through but did? If so, talk about those challenges and experiences. Help those who have nowhere to turn or do not have the answers. Help those in need to overcome the hurdles you overcame. Some people might not ever have the strength, the courage or the support you had and all they need is someone to show them the way. It just makes life a little bit easier. You might even save lives.
So I thought about life and the things I’ve gone through. I quickly realised I needed to publicly speak, write, teach, inspire, and motivate all those whom I came in contact with. I was put on this earth to help guide others in the right direction from an honest, humble and transparent point of view while maintaining a reputable standing with the work I do. What I will be talking about later on in this article might not be about the hardest battle in my life, which was cancer. What I will say is that my experiences and the advice of this life coach have humbled me. It has brought about a new philosophy on how I see life and how I live it.
I’m now a Reiki therapist and currently studying aromatherapy. A far cry from what I used to do. With this new practice, I always knew that if I didn’t maintain a level of integrity and if I wasn’t good at what I did, that no one would request my services or ask for my advice. It’s with this mindset and level of practice that I continually search for and use products from companies that operate in the similar fashion.
Two years ago I decided to make all these changes. I wrote everything down that I wanted to do. I didn’t know that aromatherapy was something I would pursue. All I knew was that there were natural alternatives to medicine and that I enjoyed the thought of alchemy and making my own things to help my family. So when it came to my present day studies, I needed to choose my arsenal of tools (Essential Oils) to work with. With no loyalties to any company, I needed to take a deeper look at which businesses were offering therapeutic grade essential oils. The two that I was introduced to were doTerra and Young Living.
Both were very appealing, but only one won me over and that was Young Living. If I felt that doTerra offered a better more pure product I would have went with them hands down.
doTerra had me sold at one point. From the marketing to their target demographic it all sounded really positive. They said they offered quality products and they stated that their oils were “Certified Therapeutic Grade”. So being the person I am, I had to dissect and digest things a bit more before I made my decision and ended up finding out a few things about the two companies.
TIME ON THE MARKET AND BUSINESS DETAILS
doTerra was founded in 2008. It may seem at a glance that they have been in operation for quite some time but compared to Young living they haven’t been around for very long. This company was founded by David Sterling, Emily Wright, Gregory P Cook, Robert J Young, Mark A Wolfer and Core B Lindley.
Before doTerra started David Stirling was the Chief Operating Officer at Young Living. Emily Wright was Mary Young’s (Wife to Dr. Gary Young founder of Young Living) personal secretary. Dr Hill was the clinic director and Gregory Cook was the Senior Director of International Development. Back when doTerra was founded, this group of Young Living executives and high-level employees left the company and joined doTerra.
Young Living was established in 1994 by Dr. Gary Young and wife Mary (Source). Before Young Living Dr. Gary Young operated a naturopathic clinic from 1982-1989 where he specialized in herbs and essential oils.
Between the two I wanted a sense of how it all started from conception. In my opinion, without comparing the two, you’d never get the feel for how one seemed more commercial and the other seemed more grass roots orientated with a life’s long dedication to quality and passion. Follow the links below to see the company story.
Young Living https://www.youngliving.com/en_US/company/about
doTerra https://doterra.com/US/en/about-our-story
ETHICS
Without getting into a battle over logistics, when you look at the dynamics it all starts to look good or bad depending on what side of the fence you are on. In my opinion it starts to look bad. I’m just taking it for how I saw it. It’s all online for anyone who wants to see it for themselves. No one knows why these people really left. Be it for good reason or bad, who knows. In my opinion they did so in a vindictive fashion. They founded a competing company of their former employer and launched numerous product lines that are pretty much identical in many ways and in some cases that included the same ingredients.
PRODUCT COMPARISONS, SIMILARITIES AND COST DIFFERENCES
So I looked at the similar oils because I wanted to see the difference in cost and I also wanted to see if Young Living and doTerra had similar blends. Across the board you’ll see that even with the near identical blends doTerra sells their products at retail a lot cheaper. They also sell at wholesale at almost the same discount. When you click on the name you’ll be directed to the page that has the oil listed to see the comparisons for yourself.
Raindrop Technique (YL) versus AromaTouch Technique (DT)
Cost:
Raindrop Kit (YL) $177.30 usd
AromaTouch Kit (DT) $133.33 usd
Valor Blend (YL) versus Balance Blend (DT)
Cost:
Valor $ 52.30 usd
Balance $26.67 usd
Thieves Blend (YL) versus OnGuard Blend (DT)
Cost:
Thieves $44.41 usd
OnGuard $42.67 usd
DiGize Blend (YL) versus DigestZen Blend (DT)
Cost:
DiGize $ 43.09 usd
DigestZen $41.33 usd
Raven Blend (YL) versus Breath Blend (DT)
Cost:
Raven $45.72 usd
Breathe $26.66 usd
LAWSUITS
So through this process I find that former company members leave Young living to start up and or Join doTerra. Then there are similar product lines developed and price points in the same range but just a bit cheaper to compete. Somewhere somehow I figured there had to be some feuding. My hunch was right and it lead me to find the lawsuits that were filed. You can see this below.
So I wondered, what happened with all of this? Something somewhere must have been said. Of course when you start looking at things online others come up. I found that there were claims that the lawsuit was thrown out and settled. In a Press Release I found these statements made by doTerra.
So naturally Young living had to have released their own statement right? The claims that the lawsuit was thrown out were not the case. There were some changes to the lawsuit because some items were not filed within the statute of limitations for the activities in question. These interpretations can be found in the Original Document explaining these changes. Young Living was still pursuing the remaining portions of the lawsuit that were not deemed to be outside the statute of limitations.
DOTERRA’S CLAIM TO “CERTIFIED PURE THERAPEUTIC GRADE®” (CPTG)
I’ve always had a buyer beware mentality. That said, its on the consumer to read labels and do research on the companies we buy from. I wanted to see if their products were “Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade®” and what deemed them so. I wanted to see if there was a legitimate governing body which actually solidifies this claim. Why did I do this? Because I noticed a little “®” next to the phrase.
If you visit doTerra’s CPTH Page you’ll see their explanation of their products and how they are ensuring quality. To my surprise as I read on I saw a disclaimer. At the bottom of the page I saw the following…
*CPTG Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade is a registered trademark of doTerra Holdings, LLC representing internal standards of quality assessment and material control. The CPTG testing protocols require the use of independent laboratories for CPTG standardization and quality testing. The CPTG protocol is not administered by government or industry regulatory agencies and does imply regulatory approval of doTerra products.
MARKETING
The “CPTG” phrase doTerra uses was concerning because this is a just a registered trademark owned by them. This is not a certification or governing body to ensure quality. They have their own criteria that they have set for themselves, not some third party official regulator. Trademark law states that no other company can use the phrase “Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade” to describe their products. So to the public it looks like that doTerra is the only essential oil company that has “ Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade” Essential oils available. This does not say anything about their quality in comparison to any other companies.
FDA FACTS OF REGULATION ON ESSENTIAL OILS
You can start to see as you read through this article my process of looking into to how things are regulated, especially after seeing “CPTG”. I wanted to see the correlation between what determines purity behind a registered trademark. I also wanted to compare the claims between two companies. So I did some research on FDA regulation of essential oil. Here’s what I found.
Myth: The FDA has determined that a product need ONLY contain only 5% essential oil in order for it to be labeled as a 100% pure oil.
Fact: The FDA does NOT set any such standard. There are many claims and statements with these percentages from distributors with both doTerra and Young Living claiming that only 2-10% of essential oil is being put into the bottle. The FDA has not made any such determination concerning essential oils. They have never issued any statements requiring purity requiring an oil to be 5% in order to be 100% pure. If company labeled their essential oil bottle “100% pure lavender oil” and it only actually contained 5% lavender oil, the company would easily loose any product misrepresentation lawsuits aimed at them because it would be quite easy to prove that the label did not match what was in the bottle. If you look up the section on the FDA Website that controls essential oil you will see what they regulate.
QULAITY CONTROL
Now this is not to say that anyone’s products aren’t good, but this lead me to dig deeper into educating myself on quality beyond FDA regulations and registered trademarks. So I went back to the company profiles to see what they said about their oils.
Young Living
Facts on Farms and Distilleries – This page provided information on owned farms, and links associated to the farms themselves.
Quality Assurance – This page explains the farming process and source material.
doTerra
doTerra Fact Sheet – This page states that their oils are not personally grown or distilled, that they are sourced and it also explains testing.
Quality assurance & Certified Pure Therapeutic Grade – Explains that CPTG is a registered trademark at the bottom of the page and explains the quality of their oils.
To this point this has been a lot of insightful information on both companies. What it ended up presenting to me was that doTerra rebottles their essential oils. They don’t own their own farms, they don’t grow their own plants and they don’t distill any of their own oils.
MY CONCLUSION
As individuals we are all entitled to doing research and making our decisions based on our findings, our ethics, our morals and our personal experiences. With my Reiki and Aromatherapy practice I wanted to be confortable in knowing that I was offering my client and customer base products and services they could trust because I built that report. I built my business one person at a time on trust and results. If I was adding to it with products, I wanted to know that it wouldn’t hinder what I built and that it would just add to it.
At the end of the day you are going to make your own decisions on what products you are going to be using. This article was written from an honest perspective, with information that has been provided by both companies and reliable sources.
My primary choice for going with Young Living for essential oils was because of the control they have in their process from the seed going in the soil, with the farms they own or farms they have partnerships in, to the strict quality control till it all gets bottled. It showed me that Young Living puts in a lot more than doTerra to ensure great Quality oils. I also loved the transparency from being able to visit these farms and seeing this process happen first hand.
doTerra does have strict testing protocols, but they don’t have the same level of control from the beginning like Young Living does. In some circles cost might be important. When you factor in that Young Living handles their process so much differently and doTerra simply sources out and rebottles their oils, a small price difference isn’t so important. You pay for quality.
The cherry on top was that Young Living simply offers many more single oils and blends than doTerra. They’ve also been in business for over twenty years, which solidifies their experience in the market. This was a company that started from the ground up. Its founder Dr. Gary Young left his naturopathic clinic to pursue a much larger goal and fulfill a long term mission of helping educate people on the benefits of essential oils on a global level.
Based on my findings, this is why I chose Young living over doTerra instead.
Credit for this article and researched information (Source)
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