Performance Strategist · Speaker · Author
Anything is possible. Why not you?™
Why Ayo still does this
Somebody is in a burning building right now, and they think it is normal.
Ayo was twenty-four, broke, walking four miles to a bakery for £10 a night. Nobody told him he could leave. One question changed that. Forty years later that question had built an organisation across sixty countries and eight hundred million dollars in sales. Now Ayo asks other people the same one.
Forty years of results
What forty years actually built.
The seats he holds now. First Chairman of Saladmaster · Board Member, Direct Selling Association UK.
Featured on Talking About Success, Jack Canfield’s Success TV. Watch the interview.
What you will take away
You will learn how to:
- ✓Ask the one question that changes everything — why not you?
- ✓Take responsibility back and own your future
- ✓See what is actually holding you back from greatness
- ✓Build a result you can repeat, instead of one you got lucky with
- ✓How to lead people who don’t report to you
- ✓Keep resilience and consistency, regardless of the outside circumstances
- ✓How to feel good in your own skin
- ✓Install twenty-four operating principles that hold when nobody is watching
- ✓Design bespoke training and performance coaching to suit your needs
How it works
Four steps. That is the whole method.
Understand the business, top to bottom
The sales presentation. The management structure. The organisation around them, and whether the motivation underneath is real or manufactured. Not what the reports say — what is actually happening.
Find the gap and name it
Where you are, measured against where you should be. Named precisely, out loud, and rarely where you expected it to be — which is usually why it has survived this long.
Build a plan that actually runs
Sequenced and costed, built around the team you already have rather than the one an org chart says you should. Every step carries an owner, a date and a number against it.
Work it with your people
With the management team and out in the field, in front of real customers. Nothing is signed off until the new way of operating runs without outside help, and your own people can explain why it works.
Talking About Success — Success TV
He shares a stage with the people he grew up reading.
A guest on Talking About Success, and a co-author with Brian Tracy in Pay It Forward, which reached the Amazon best-seller list. All of it from a bakery floor.
Forty years, in order
The record.
Every award, every role, every board — from his first Gold Circle to two Halls of Fame.
The Truth About Success
The questions nobody asks on stage.
Jack Canfield
Chicken Soup for the Soul · 500m copies
The full interview, twenty-nine minutes.
Nick Nanton
22 Emmy Awards · 60 documentaries
Runs The Success Network. Episode 2.
Jeff Reigle
President & CEO, Regal Ware · 30 years
A hundred years in business. Episode 12.
Testimonials
What industry leaders say.
“A True Visionary and Leader”
“Ayo Olaseinde embodies the heart of what makes direct selling so powerful: purpose-driven leadership, unwavering belief in people, and a relentless commitment to helping others achieve their fullest potential.”
Ryan ReigleExecutive Chairman, Regal Ware
“Tenacious in His Drive”
“Ayo is a very captivating speaker who has the ability to really connect with his audiences. This connection gets people to look at themselves differently. Creating a sales organization from nothing is one of the most challenging business ventures; Ayo is tenacious in his drive to ensure that he and the people around him find the level of success they are looking for.”
Greg WindfeldtPresident & CEO, Preferred Credit Inc.
“An Indelible Mark on Our Industry”
“Ayo has dedicated decades to shaping, defending, and uplifting the world of direct selling. Through tireless advocacy, unwavering integrity, and a belief in people over profit, he’s left an indelible mark on our industry.”
Susannah Schofield OBEDirector General, Direct Selling Association UK
“Walking Wisdom”
“Ayo has a unique way of delivering life lessons through relatable stories and analogies, captivating his audience and keeping them engaged throughout. Ayo genuinely cares about people and wants to make a difference. This man is Walking Wisdom, who has selflessly deposited so much into my life.”
Mark JonesSenior Vice President, EMEA Division, Saladmaster
Anything is possible.Why not you?™
About Ayo
From the bakery floorto the global stage.
This is his story, in his words. Forty years in direct sales. Sixty-plus countries. Eight hundred million dollars in sales. It started with one question.
The journey
One question changed everything.
Chapter One
The bakery floor
I was born in the UK. My father is Nigerian, my mother German. I was six weeks old when my parents took me to Nigeria, and that is where I grew up. I came back to England at eighteen with no qualifications and nothing to my name. I slept on a friend’s couch with a case full of clothes. I walked four miles every day to stand outside a bakery, hoping to be picked for casual work at ten pounds a night.
One morning, walking to the bakery, a Mercedes drove past with a family inside. I stopped and asked myself one question — why not me? What are they doing that I am not doing? That question changed the direction of my life.
Chapter Two
The direct sales decision
I answered an advert for a position in direct sales in January 1982. I started at the bottom. Within two years I was running my own branch. In 1984 I opened my own dealership and built it into one of the largest distributorships in the UK, turning over forty million pounds. I became regional manager for the UK and spent over twenty years developing leaders and growing the business.
I was not lucky. I was consistent. I showed up. And I asked the question — why not me? — every single day.
Chapter Three
Building Saladmaster across the world
In 2004 I was head-hunted to start Saladmaster in the United Kingdom, as a one-man operation, from zero. Within a few years we were the fastest growing region in the company. I expanded the business from the UK into Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
In 2016 Saladmaster UK was founded. In 2018 I was appointed Global President, leading operations across more than sixty countries. By the time I stepped down from that role at the end of 2025, the organisation had generated over eight hundred million dollars in sales.
Chapter Four
Chairman, author, legacy
In September 2025 I was appointed the first Chairman of Saladmaster. I sit on the board of the Direct Selling Association UK, having chaired it. In May 2025 I was inducted into the DSA UK Hall of Fame.
I have been a featured guest on Jack Canfield’s Success TV. I have written three books. And I have built The Why Factor Academy to house everything I have learned — the speaking, the books, and The Operating System. This is the work I am here to do now — to give other people the system that took me from the bakery floor to the global stage.
In his own words
“Never question your ability — just question your performance. Success can be learnt. Nobody is better than you. Anything is possible if you believe and work hard. Be the change in your life.”
Ayo Olaseinde
Beyond the stage
Two businesses he is building now.
The speaking is not the whole of it. Forty years in the field left him with two problems he wanted solved properly, so he went and built the answers.
My One Button
Founding partner · live on the App Store
A voice-first productivity app for people who talk for a living. You press one button and speak — appointments, people, facts about people, tasks — and it captures, transcribes and organises the lot, syncs your calendar, and sends the message or starts the call for you. myonebutton.com
A presentation analyser for direct selling
Co-owner · in development
In any sales organisation the field manager never gets round to watching everybody present. So this watches instead: it records a presentation, scores it against the ideal version, and shows the exact wording that was missed. Every salesperson gets coached, not just the ones a manager happened to sit in on — and they can practise against it at home with no customer in front of them.
The burning building
What it actually means.
A burning building is not a crisis. A crisis is loud, and people run.
A burning building is quiet. It is a business that stopped growing and calls it a plateau. A sales force that stopped believing and calls it a difficult market. A leadership team that stopped leading and calls it experience. A person earning far less than they are worth who has stopped asking why.
Nothing is visibly on fire. That is exactly what makes it dangerous — everyone inside has agreed it is normal.
Ayo was in one. One question got him out.
Then he did the thing almost nobody does. He stepped down as Global President of a sixty-country organisation and went back in.
“I never set out to be great, but I did set out to be great to the people I serve.”
Ayo OlaseindeSaladmaster Hall of Fame
Are you in the burning building?
Ready to work together
Anything is possible. Why not you?
Whether you want to book him to speak, explore The Operating System, or talk about consulting for your business — the next step is yours.
Book Ayo to speak
Forty years of results,delivered from a stage.
Every keynote is backed by a number he produced himself — sixty countries, eight hundred million dollars, and a bakery floor before any of it.
See for yourself
Two rooms, two years apart.
The Four Seasons of Change
Direct Selling University, 2025
The main stage, in front of the industry’s leadership, and one question: which season is your business in? Spring, summer, autumn or winter — and the decisions that put you there. Shakespeare, Blockbuster, and the Covid pivot that moved a seventy-five-year-old face-to-face business online in sixty days. Indecision, he argues, is itself a decision.
Inducted into the Hall of Fame
Saladmaster, 80th anniversary
Eight hundred and eighty people from thirty-one countries, on their feet. The citation runs through forty years of it — and then Ayo answers. “I never set out to be great, but I did set out to be great to the people I serve.” He dedicates the award to his mother.
You will learn how to:
- ✓Ask the one question that changes everything — why not you?
- ✓Take responsibility back and own your future
- ✓See what is actually holding you back from greatness
- ✓Build a result you can repeat, instead of one you got lucky with
- ✓How to lead people who don’t report to you
- ✓Keep resilience and consistency, regardless of the outside circumstances
- ✓How to feel good in your own skin
- ✓Install twenty-four operating principles that hold when nobody is watching
- ✓Design bespoke training and performance coaching to suit your needs
Keynotes
Four keynotes. Four problems. One operator who has solved them.
Each one is built around a specific problem an audience actually has — delivered from four decades of building, leading and turning around real organisations.
The Operating System — for teams running on motivation that keeps wearing off
For teams who are inconsistent, plateaued, or running on motivation that keeps wearing off.
A twenty-four-principle behaviour-installation system that replaces failing defaults with rules that hold under pressure. Built from four decades of leading sales and leadership organisations across sixty-plus countries. Not a motivational talk — a working methodology your team can use the same day.
Why Not Me? — for anyone stuck beneath their own ceiling
For audiences who need permission to aim higher — founders, emerging leaders, or anyone stuck beneath their own ceiling.
The bakery-floor-to-global-stage story. How one question changed the direction of Ayo’s life — and how the same shift applies to anyone sitting in the audience. Identity drives performance. This keynote shows your audience how to rewrite theirs.
Leadership in Direct Sales and Beyond — for organisations scaling leaders
For organisations building or scaling leaders — direct selling, network marketing, sales teams, founders.
Lessons from taking a one-man operation to a sixty-country, eight-hundred-million-dollar organisation. How to build leaders, not just performers. How to scale culture across borders, languages and markets.
Building a High-Performance Sales Organisation — for presidents and country heads
For presidents, country heads and founders building or turning around sales teams.
The operating mechanics most conferences skip over. Recruitment. Standards. Systems. Succession. What Ayo actually did to build one of the largest distributorships in the UK, then expand across Europe, Africa and the Middle East.
Credentials
Why event organisers book Ayo.
Proven track record
Bringing out the best in people, teams, leaders and organisations around the world. Inducted into the Direct Selling Association UK Hall of Fame on 1 May 2025, and a board member there today.
Jack Canfield’s Success TV
A featured guest on Talking About Success. Co-author with Brian Tracy in Pay It Forward. Alongside the reference-standard names in the field.
Forty years of operating results
Former Global President of a sixty-country organisation. Lifetime sales volume above eight hundred million dollars, and one of the largest distributorships in the UK built from nothing.
Built to fit your organisation
Three ways it runs.
The keynote
One stage, one audience, one talk. The story and the principles that came out of it.
The masterclass
Selected principles, worked through with a leadership team rather than presented at them.
The full installation
All twenty-four operating principles, in order, across several days. The Operating System.
Not sure which of the three fits? Send the audience, the people and the date, and Ayo will tell you what fits.
“This man is Walking Wisdom. If you ever get the chance to hear him, take it — and take a notebook.”
Mark JonesSenior Vice President, EMEA Division, Saladmaster
Forty years, in order
The record.
Every award, every role, every board — from his first Gold Circle to two Halls of Fame.
Built from nothing.
Ayo was twenty-four, broke, walking four miles to a bakery for £10 a night. Nobody told him he could leave. So he asked one question.
Head-hunted in 2004 to start Saladmaster in the United Kingdom from scratch, when there was no business here at all. Ayo went into the field personally and built it from the ground up.
By the time Ayo stepped down as Global President at the end of 2025, the organisation he led had generated over eight hundred million dollars in sales across sixty countries.
In order
The full list.
Two Halls of Fame. The Direct Selling Association UK in May 2025, for significant and lasting contribution to the industry. Saladmaster in 2026, at the company’s eightieth anniversary.
The Truth About Success
He asks the questionsnobody asks on stage.
Ayo sits down with people who have actually done it. Short clips first, full episodes underneath each one.
Jack Canfield
Chicken Soup for the Soul · over 500 million copies sold
The one to start with. Twenty-nine minutes with the man who built the best-selling non-fiction series in publishing history.
Nick Nanton
22 Emmy Awards · 60 documentaries · runs The Success Network
Episode 2
An Emmy-winning director on how a story gets told — and why most people tell their own one badly.
Jeff Reigle
President & CEO, Regal Ware · 30 years
Episode 12
A hundred years of family business, and thirty of them as chief executive. Regal Ware is the company that owns Saladmaster.
Susannah Schofield OBE
Director General, Direct Selling Association UK
Episode 8
The woman who runs the industry body, on what actually separates the people who make it from the people who do not.
Evelyn Sheridan
Direct selling leader
Episode 11
On never prejudging anybody — and on picturing the people ahead of you in life rather than resenting them.
Mark Jones
Senior Vice President, EMEA Division, Saladmaster
Episode 6
The man who called Ayo “Walking Wisdom”, on what a legacy actually is.
Greg Windfeldt
President & CEO, Preferred Credit Inc.
Episode 4
The man who finances the direct selling trade, on what he looks for before he backs anybody.
Larry Dickman
Author, Thank God it’s Monday
Episode 9
On accepting change and failure as the price of success, and on being a businessman rather than a salesman.
There are more. The full run of The Truth About Success is on his channel.
The Why Factor Academy
The Ayo OlaseindeOperating System.
Twenty-four operating principles, installed in order. A system that keeps working long after the training ends.
Where it came from.
For years Ayo delivered other people’s material — Brian Tracy, Jack Canfield — and delivered it well. The principles were sound. They were not his.
So the work was done the other way round: take what those teachers got right, add forty years of operating results that nobody else has, and write down what actually held.
Twenty-four principles came out of it — the ones that held up across sixty countries and forty years.
The exercises are the work, and they are done live, with Ayo. That is why the handbook is not a download.
The problem
Most training fails before the week is out.
The brain forgets ninety per cent of what it hears within seventy-two hours. Motivational seminars deliver a high, then fade. Information transfer does not create behaviour change. Teams leave a conference inspired and return to work exactly the same.
That is the cognitive overload problem — and it is why almost all leadership and sales training quietly stops working within a week.
The solution
Installation. Not information.
The Operating System bypasses the thinking brain and replaces failing default behaviours with precise, actionable rules that hold under pressure.
It is the same methodology used in Special Forces, emergency medicine and aviation — domains where performance cannot be allowed to drop when the stakes rise.
Every principle follows the same six steps. Name the failure pattern · describe the mechanism · state the principle · define the lever · demonstrate · close. No motivational stacking. No theory.
The structure
Twenty-four principles. Three acts. One system.
Act One — Foundation · Principles 1–8
Stability and Control
Restore agency and remove internal friction. The psychological defaults that keep people stuck before any execution can happen.
- 1Responsibility Restores Control
- 2Identity Sets the Ceiling
- 3You Cannot Change What You Blame
- 4Clarity Beats Motivation
- 5Emotions Are Signals, Not Instructions
- 6Your Environment Programmes You
- 7Consistency Requires Fewer Decisions
- 8Self-Trust Is Built Through Follow-Through
Act Two — Execution · Principles 9–16
Momentum and Reliability
Turn intention into consistent action. This is where capability becomes output.
- 9Goals Don’t Execute — Actions Do
- 10If It’s Not Scheduled, It’s Not Real
- 11Focus Is a Subtraction Problem
- 12Distraction Is a Cost, Not a Quirk
- 13Progress Comes From Short Feedback Loops
- 14Confidence Follows Action
- 15Rejection Is a Data Point, Not a Verdict
- 16Momentum Is Created, Not Found
Act Three — Direction · Principles 17–24
Leverage and Leadership
Aim the effort at outcomes worth having. What separates a burst of performance from a career, and from an organisation, that lasts.
- 17Values Decide Faster Than Goals
- 18Long-Term Thinking Wins Short-Term Pressure
- 19Leadership Is the Ability to Reduce Noise
- 20Presence Creates Influence
- 21Simplicity Scales — Complexity Breaks
- 22Results Improve When Standards Are Visible
- 23Legacy Is Built Through Daily Decisions
- 24Sustainable Success Requires a Long Game
They are sequenced, and the order is the point. The later ones do not work until the earlier ones are in. That is why it is an installation rather than a reading list.
Delivery formats
Built to fit your organisation.
Three-day intensive
The full system, in person, across three days. Eight principles a day. The complete installation.
Single-day masterclass
Selected principles from a single act, as an intensive one-day session. Built for leadership teams and annual offsites.
Modular forty-five-minute sessions
Each principle stands alone. Stackable, repeatable, designed to fit a recurring team rhythm.
Live or virtual
Face-to-face, or over Zoom for distributed teams. The same installation quality, anywhere in the world.
Consulting
For the people carryingthe organisation.
Sometimes a keynote is not what is needed. It is somebody who has run the thing you are running, sitting on your side of the table.
Why people call
Four rooms you might recognise.
The field is not producing
Not a training problem and not a motivation problem. Usually a structure problem that nobody has named out loud.
Growth has stalled
The thing that got you here has stopped working, and the instinct is to do more of it.
A new market
Opened from nothing, in a country where the company did not exist at all. Twice.
Growth and mindset change
Good people, promoted, and quietly still doing their old job.
Leadership · Sales · Organisation · People
A trusted strategic partner in growth and development.
Six focused engagements, each built on four decades of building, growing and turning around businesses across sixty-plus countries.
Executive coaching
For founders, presidents and senior leaders.
One-to-one mentorship. Confidential, structured, and built around the decisions you are actually facing rather than a theoretical framework.
Business analysis
For organisations that know something is wrong but not what.
A deep-dive assessment of the organisation’s health, structure, sales engine and growth potential. Where the gaps are. Where the leverage is. What to fix first.
Turnaround strategies
For underperforming divisions, territories or whole organisations.
Proven frameworks for revitalising what has stalled. Practical, sequenced, and built from having done it — not from theory.
Personal development and mindset
For leaders whose people have stopped believing it is possible.
The work Ayo is best known for on a stage, brought inside a business: changing how people see themselves before asking them to change what they do.
Opening new markets
For companies entering a territory, local or global, where they have no business at all.
Done twice from a standing start — the United Kingdom from zero, then Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Not a market-entry report: the first hires, the first offices, and the first sales made in person.
Leadership development
For organisations building a high-performance culture.
Behaviour-based training, rooted in The Operating System and four decades of developing leaders across sixty-plus countries.
Why Ayo
Four decades. Sixty-plus countries. One system that works.
This is not consulting from a textbook. It is consulting from the floor — from every stage of building, scaling, struggling and succeeding in real businesses around the world.
How it actually goes
Straight into the field.
Listens first
To the people doing the job, not only to the people describing it. Usually for longer than anyone expects.
Names the real problem
Plainly, once, to the person who can do something about it. It is rarely the problem you booked the work for.
Works it with your team
Alongside them, in front of customers where it matters. Not from behind a desk.
Leaves something that holds
A way of operating your own people can run unaided. That is the whole point.
What you will not get. A report. Nobody needs another document that sits in a drawer — the work happens in the field, with your people.
In his own words
“Ayo Olaseinde embodies the very best of our industry.”
Ryan ReigleExecutive Chairman
None of this was studied. Head-hunted in 2004 to start Saladmaster in the United Kingdom from scratch, Ayo went into the field personally and built it from the ground up — ending as Global President across sixty countries.
Three books
Written down,so it outlives the talk.
A talk ends when you leave. A book does not.
Born with the Power to Win
Did you know you were born with the power to win? It follows Michael, a man who settled for second best and hoped for better one day — and turned it round. Loosely based on true events; the names were changed. It comes with a companion workbook, because reading is not enough.
Pay It Forward
Co-authored with Brian Tracy and a select group of the world’s leading entrepreneurs. In his chapter Ayo explores the power of asking why — and the three things he believes separate successful people from everyone else.
Have You Got the Why Factor?
Are you happy? Has the world seen the best of you? Do you have more to give? The book began with the single question Ayo asked himself as a young man with nothing to his name — and the system he built so that anyone else could ask it too.
Free companion workbook
Get the workbook for Born with the Power to Win.
The workbook that comes with the book is the part that does the work. Put your email in and Ayo will send it to you immediately. No cost. No catch.
Your details are safe. Ayo will only use your email to send you the workbook and occasional updates. Unsubscribe any time.
Available on all major platforms
The audiobook is available wherever you listen.
Born with the Power to Win is read by Ayo himself, and is out as a paperback and an audiobook wherever you buy books.
The company he keeps
Co-authored with Brian Tracy.
Pay It Forward put Ayo alongside one of the most widely read authors in personal development, and it reached the Amazon best-seller list. Ayo has also been a guest on Jack Canfield’s Success TV — Canfield being the man behind Chicken Soup for the Soul, over five hundred million copies sold.
They are people who have worked with him.
For your event
Signed copies for the audience.
Ayo regularly supplies books for the audiences he speaks to — signed, and handed over at the end rather than left on a table.
It is the difference between a talk somebody enjoyed and a talk somebody still has on a shelf a year later. Ask when you book.
Companies buying for a whole team can order in bulk through Amazon at publisher rate, below retail.
Get in touch with the team
Tell him aboutyour audience.
The more Ayo knows about your audience, the better the talk is. Nothing here is a commitment.
Choose your path
How can Ayo help?
Every enquiry goes to the right person, first time.
Book Ayo to speak
Keynotes, conferences, leadership events and corporate stages.
If you are planning an event and want Ayo on the programme, this is the route. See the four keynotes.
Consulting and executive coaching
For founders, presidents and senior leaders.
One-to-one coaching, business analysis, turnaround strategies and leadership development. What that looks like.
The Operating System
For a team that needs it installed, not explained.
The twenty-four principles brought to your organisation — three-day intensive, single-day masterclass, or modular sessions. The system.
Anything else
Media requests, partnerships, questions about the books.
Anything that does not fit the three above. Use the form and it will reach the right person.
Send a message
Tell him about your audience.
He reads these himself. If the date does not work he will say so quickly rather than leave you waiting.
Thank you
Got it.
Your message is with the team, and somebody will come back to you personally.
While you are here. The four keynotes are on the speaking page, and the interviews with Jack Canfield, Nick Nanton and Susannah Schofield OBE are here.