Global Emissary of Hope and Opportunity

Alfredo Bala is one of the most dynamic and passionate leaders you’ll ever meet.

A first-generation immigrant of Portuguese origin, he came to the U.S. looking for the American dream. Starting at the very bottom, he worked a minimum-wage job while learning English and going to school. His plan was to get an education and climb the corporate ladder, but his whole perspective changed the day he discovered Network Marketing, almost thirty-eight years ago.

Over the years, Al has been serving and practicing the networking profession in three different capacities: from 1980 till 1991, he was strictly a distributor; in 1991, he partnered with one of the top leaders in his company and became responsible for launching international markets; today he continues to travel the world as President and CEO of International Expansion for a publicly traded wellness company.

creating a global business

After completing his corporate mission of creating a global business that operates seamlessly on every continent, Al may very well return to his first love, which is working in the field, bringing opportunities for Health and Wealth to those who are ready to lift themselves out of poverty and limitation.

Al’s network marketing story is unique in that he built the business at the ground level—“in the Living Rooms and dens …Belly to Belly ” as he likes to say—in sixty-five different countries.

One of his greatest joys is knowing that he can go back to any of these different countries and find a friend waiting there for him, somebody whose life has been turned around thanks to the opportunity Al brought to his country.

“What else can you dream off?” he says. “No money will buy you that kind of satisfaction. This business is my life’s calling and I know I’ll be doing it for the rest of my life. It makes me feel like a missionary of goodwill who reminds people how to dream and gives them tools to create the lives they were meant to live.”

Discovering Network Marketing

Al Bala was born in Senegal, a country in West Africa where a third of the population lives below the international poverty line of US$ 1.25 a day.

Growing up in a middle-class family, Al was a bright but timid boy, so he decided he was going to be an engineer, a profession that would keep him away from people—or so he thought.

At the age of seventeen, Al moved to the U.S. with his family to pursue his education, hoping to eventually land a good job.

While finishing high school and attending college, he worked at a factory for $1.65 to help support his mom and two brothers.

Al earned his degree in electronic engineering in 1980 and started thinking in terms of climbing the corporate ladder, until one night he received a call from a friend inviting him to an opportunity meeting.

Al had never considered being in business for himself or heard of network marketing, but he immediately fell in love with the concept.

An interesting coincidence was that the presenter of the meeting happened to be the Vice President of Manufacturing at Texas Instruments. “The typical dream of an aspiring engineer,” says Al, “was to, one day, if you did all the right things, be at Texas Instruments as a VP of something—because obviously you could never be the president.

This man was in his early fifties, but his corporate position was not what excited him. He explained how he had found a way to replace a forty-year career plan with a two-year plan that could help you make all your dreams come true.”

This was the first time Al actually starting thinking about what his dreams might be.

“Network marketing allows you to reconnect with hidden desires that may have lived in the back of your mind for your whole life but that you just didn’t know about,” he says. “That night, I realized I could be in business for myself for just a hundred bucks, and I didn’t have to think about it twice.”

Al joined in the business and started listening to some tapes he was told to buy.

It was the first time he heard a recording of words—without music—but he knew right away that this was where he was going to get his real education.

“I still remember that first talk,” he says. “I learned about negative and positive thinking, the power of a dream, goal setting, that we are all engineered for greatness and how we can aspire to it.

Despite all the years of schooling, these concepts weren’t a part of my world. I became a tape addict: I listened to so many tapes that my dad would ask, ‘Will you ever make enough money in this business to pay for these tapes?’”

This is how Al started his journey in self-development, which to this day he believes may be the most precious gift the networking profession offers.

“I really came to understand who I was,” he says. “Before, I saw myself as a shy person who was studious and introverted. I felt I was born to be in a corner somewhere working on something, away from people.

Network marketing helped me explore a side of me I didn’t even know was there.

Today, it’s my life calling to introduce people to the concept of self-development so they can grow and expand, and attract into their lives the means and the people that will allow them to continue that process.”