Ask MonaVie’s employees and distributors for the secret to the company’s success, and you’ll hear the same explanation again and again: a quality product, a dedicated sales force and the leadership of Dallin Larsen, founder, chairman and chief executive officer.

In fact, some say Larsen’s vision, commitment and charisma are the most crucial factors in MonaVie’s breakout performance. They even describe him as the company’s “heart and soul.”

“He’s an extraordinary leader on a lot of levels,” explains Devin Thorpe, MonaVie’s chief financial officer.

Larsen is a lifelong entrepreneur. He’s also a veteran of network marketing and founded MonaVie knowing relationships are what drive a direct sales company. So with a hand-picked executive team now running day-to-day operations, Larsen is free to focus on the growing legion of distributors who sell MonaVie’s acai beverages through one-on-one contact with consumers.

Ask Larsen about MonaVie’s greatest asset, and he insists it is the independent contractors who “go out and make their own reality.” MonaVie’s cumulative sales have passed $2.1 billion since its 2005 debut, and nearly one million distributors have enrolled in the multi-level compensation plan Larsen calls the best in the business.

When Larsen addresses a packed convention hall, there’s no doubt he connects with distributors and knows what they need.  “He’s powerful on stage, yet he’s just as passionate and committed one on one,” Thorpe said. “Our sales leaders have access to him. When one of them wants to reach Dallin, he answers the phone.”

Larsen motivates and empowers his audiences with messages of principle, potential and honor.

“I hope you will all be part of the MonaVie-for-life club,” he told several thousand distributors at a recent gathering, “because I do believe we’ve got the product, the timing, the management, the compensation plan and cause to make this the largest direct-selling company in the history of the planet Earth. And we’re going to do it! We are going to do that!”

“I believe in doing the right thing for the right reason, operating with values so we can build a $20 billion company over the next 20 years, and folks, we are well on our way.”

Larsen grew up in the small farm community of Rexburg, Idaho, and his parents instilled a strong work ethic in their 10 children. When Larsen was named Ernst & Young’s national 2009 Entrepreneur of the Year, he gave his mom and dad credit. “Thanks for the lessons, teaching me how to roll up my sleeves and go sell the zucchini and don’t come home until it’s sold. Those are old-fashioned values.”

Larsen put himself through Brigham Young University by running shaved ice stands with his older brother, Randy, a MonaVie cofounder and executive vice president. In his early 20s, Larsen bought a Diet Center franchise with a loan co-signed by his father. It did well, and he bought four more. Along the way, he learned how businesses can thrive or fail because of the people involved in them.

He got his first taste of network marketing in the 1980s when he became a distributor for a company where a friend worked. Larsen wasn’t exactly a star salesman back then, but the business model fascinated him. He later met the founder of USANA, a direct-seller of nutritional products. He joined USANA in 1991 and became vice president of sales. Sales reached $120 million over his nine years at USANA.

In 2005, Larsen, his brother and Henry Marsh, a four-time Olympian, started MonaVie. A friend happened to mention the acai berry, the purple fruit that grows on palms in the northern Amazon. The partners did some research, asked a scientist to study the berry’s nutritional values and came up with their namesake beverage by blending acai with 18 other fruits.

Sales immediately took off. The majority of MonaVie sales have been in the United States, but Larsen says the company will be operating in 15 other countries by 2010.

A country Larsen is especially committed to is Brazil, the source of the berry that has improved so many lives. Larsen constantly advocates for better conditions there and is a champion of the MORE Project, a charity providing food, clothing and education to more than 1,000 people in the slums near Rio de Janeiro. In 2009, MonaVie, its employees, and distributors donated more than $2.3 million to The MORE Project. MonaVie pays all of MORE’s administrative costs, and the executives and distributors travel there often to volunteer.

“I always say life is like a game of tennis, and he or she who serves best usually wins,” Larsen says of his belief in giving back, especially if you are blessed with much to give. His goal is “not for MonaVie to be the best company in the world, but to be the best company for the world.”

Larsen lives in Florida with his wife, Karree and their children. He has served on the board of directors of the Direct Selling Association in Washington D.C.

Henry Marsh’s days of national track titles and world rankings are behind him, but he’s still setting records.

As founder and vice chairman of MonaVie, the retired steeplechase champion and four-time Olympian is guiding the young company to unequalled growth within the direct selling industry. Some may assume such corporate goal-shattering can’t compare with being an athlete performing his personal best on an international stage, but Marsh says the success is even sweeter this time around.

“In track and field, it’s just you. You’re competing against yourself, to be the best you can be and it’s very self-focused. But network marketing is about us, not about me,” Marsh said. “The success of MonaVie has opened up so many opportunities for me and the company to make a difference in the world.”

“I guess I made a difference while running, by inspiring some people, but with MonaVie, we’re changing lives, hundreds of thousands of lives, and it’s very humbling to be an agent of change. I realize I’m just a small part of it.”

MonaVie has attained more than $2.1 billion in cumulative sales since 2005 and is reaching consumers through more than one million distributors in 12 countries, with more international growth ahead. “It’s unprecedented. It’s unparalleled,” Marsh says of the company’s performance. “MonaVie in the first four years has grown faster than any network marketing company in the industry’s history.”

Marsh knows a thing or two about setting records. Starting in the late 1970s, Marsh was one of the world’s top-rated 3,000-meter steeplechase runners for 13 consecutive years, including three years as number one. He holds more world ranking points than any other U.S. distance runner and was on four Olympic teams from 1976 through 1988.

Marsh set the American steeplechase record (8:09.17) in 1985, a time that wasn’t beaten until 2006. He also holds the distinction of being one of the oldest U.S. runners to break the four-minute-mile barrier, a goal he reached at age 31 in Berne, Switzerland, and repeated three years later at a pre-Olympic meet in Seoul, Korea.

Born in Massachusetts, Marsh grew up in Texas and Hawaii, graduating from the same school Barack Obama attended. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Brigham Young University, where, of course, he was a track stand out and scored his first Olympic berth. He also took two years away from his studies and his running to serve a mission in Brazil for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

He studied law at the University of Oregon while qualifying for his second Olympic team. In fact, trials for the 1980 games were held at the university, and in his typical multi-tasking style, he went to class in the morning, then set an American record at the trials in the afternoon. (He didn’t compete in the Olympics that year, however, because the United States boycotted the Moscow games.)

After earning his law degree, Marsh joined the Salt Lake City firm of Parson, Behle and Latimer. He took a leave of absence to compete in the 1984 Olympics, and his experience at those games is featured in Paramount Pictures’ “16 Days of Glory.”

Because Marsh’s father and grandfather were both attorneys, he always assumed he would be a lawyer too. But he started practicing and learned the adversarial nature of the work didn’t suit him and also realized he didn’t want to have his earning potential so tied to the number of hours worked. After three years, he left to find a better fit.

Marsh briefly worked as a local TV sportscaster and ran a business called Athletes Unlimited, managing amateur athletes. And in the late 1990s, he joined Franklin International, which later became FranklinCovey. He managed a stress-management curriculum taught to corporate audiences internationally. He also became the second U.S. runner in history to qualify for four Olympic teams.

It was while working with FranklinCovey that Marsh met Dallin A. Larsen. Marsh didn’t know Larsen, but Larsen approached him about endorsing a product he was working with. “I got to know Dallin, and I got to know network marketing. Dallin and I just hit it off. “

Marsh was intrigued by the potential of direct sales and began thinking about producing a nutritional line. “I ran into Dallin one day and told him my idea, and he said he was thinking the same thing and we said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

In 2005 they launched MonaVie. Marsh did just about everything in the beginning, from customer service to compliance. Now he focuses on strategic planning and external relations, especially reaching out to the distributors essential to the success of MonaVie. “Every week I take calls from distributors or call them to congratulate them, and I talk to people who want sponsorships or help building a business.”

He says his leadership style is “to empower, to trust and to recognize and reward. I believe that if I hire the right people, they’re going to do a great job, and I have to make sure I give them the environment to do a great job.”

Marsh has inspired people to reach their own personal best for some time now. He became a successful motivational speaker while working at FranklinCovey, and in 1997, Simon & Schuster published his book, “The Breakthrough Factor: Creating Success and Happiness through a Life of Value.” Despite his multiple Olympic performances, a gold medal eluded Marsh, and he knows well that immense satisfaction can come from the pursuit of victory rather than the win itself.

Marsh lives in Salt Lake City with his wife, Rozanne, and their two young boys. He also has four grown children from his first marriage, and three of them work at MonaVie headquarters. Marsh was still running a 5-minute mile until recently, but now that his knees have gotten the best of him, he’s off the track and on the bicycle or the elliptical machine.

That doesn’t mean he’s slowing down, though. The future of MonaVie is unlimited, and Marsh is helping set the pace.

“It’s fun to accomplish things together. MonaVie is giving me an opportunity to really make much more of a difference, a difference through personal giving, corporate giving and more. It’s very satisfying, something I hadn’t experienced in my life.”

Dell Brown has played a major role at MonaVie since the company’s inception, first as an expert consultant brought in to help finesse the original product and now as MonaVie’s president. But despite his long involvement, he sees his efforts at MonaVie as just beginning.

“The company is very new, and even though it’s achieved a certain stability and size, I don’t feel like my work is finished. Dallin has a vision of making MonaVie a $20 billion company, and I see it as my job to create the infrastructure, management team and processes that can support that kind of business,” Brown explains, referring to MonaVie Founder, Chairman and CEO Dallin A. Larsen.

As president and chief operating officer, Brown, 43, is responsible for all of MonaVie’s functions outside of finance, marketing and sales. He’s well-qualified for the position, having taken the initiative to evaluate virtually every aspect of the business when it launched four years ago. His input has been crucial to the company’s breakout performance and the unique quality of its nutritional juices.

Brown has an extensive background in product development and performance evaluations, and in 2005, had co-founded JDK Solutions, a broker of manufacturing services and materials. MonaVie’s founders immediately hired the firm to advise them on the beverage they were developing with the then-little-known acai berry.

“My partner at JDK had been working with acai for quite a while and had substantial experience with it,” Brown said. “JDK Solutions was hired to help with the manufacturing of the product and the sourcing of the raw materials and in some product-development initiatives.”

Specifically, Brown and his partner helped with the efficacy of the original formula. “It was just a little bit finicky from a manufacturing perspective, and we thought we could improve it.”

But Brown’s involvement didn’t end there. The payment arrangement his firm had for its consulting services was a success fee, meaning if MonaVie succeeded, so would JDK.

“It was in my interest to make sure the company was operating well, so I began functioning as an adviser in other operations like the call center and supply chain,” Brown explained. “That helped me get to know the company and put me unofficially in an important management role. The leaders got to know me and our ability to work together.” Two years later, in late 2007, he officially joined MonaVie’s executive team.

“Unquestionably there was some luck here,” Brown says of the company’s remarkable success. “But it’s also been more than that. It’s been having good field leaders who have been very effective at evangelizing the product and the income opportunity associated with it. It’s been visionary leadership and it’s been a very exceptional product.”

Brown is a Utah native. He served a two-year mission in Germany for the LDS Church and then returned to Utah to earn a degree in zoology from Brigham Young University.

He initially planned to become a doctor and was accepted into medical school, but concerns about the lack of autonomy for physicians in the American health-care system dampened his enthusiasm. Instead, he jumped at a corporate opportunity that doesn’t come around every day for a new graduate.

Brown went straight from university to director of product development for Nu Skin, a direct selling company that sells skin care and nutrition products. Brown was in charge of developing dozens of products as well as adapting and localizing products for foreign markets.

“Nu Skin was a company in my neighborhood that was taking off and there was a chance for me to have a role in it. I made some mistakes, but I also had some big successes and learned a lot along the way.”

Brown stayed with Nu Skin for six years and then earned an MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

After graduate school, he joined APM Management Consultants and specialized in hospital mergers and acquisitions. When the company was acquired by CSC Healthcare, he became a senior consultant responsible for complex consulting arrangements with medical centers and health care networks.

In 2000, Brown cofounded Global Health Consulting, which gauged the financial and clinical performances of hospitals and other health care institutions and led the firm’s expansion into Japan.

Like his colleagues, Brown sees unlimited potential for MonaVie and its impact on the direct selling industry. “I’d really like to see MonaVie be a different kind of company, see it do things differently.”

Brown and his wife, Kristin, live in Orem, Utah, with their two children. In his free time, he enjoys the outdoors—hiking, cycling, and fishing. (On summer breaks during college, he was guide on the Grand Canyon’s Colorado River.) His hobbies also include baking bread and cooking Sunday dinners.

Devin Thorpe was on his lunch break in downtown Salt Lake City one summer day in 2008 when he got a phone call he’s been grateful for each day since.

At the time, he was managing a new-business initiative for the state of Utah, a position he took after much soul searching led him to believe it would be the ideal way to combine his corporate expertise with his desire to help others. Unfortunately, he had started to feel more frustrated bureaucrat than fulfilled mentor. Then his cell phone rang.

“I was in an increasing state of misery and literally was just walking down the street one day when I got a call from Randy Larsen,” he explains. Larsen, who had worked with Thorpe years before at another company, asked Thorpe if he remembered him, then handed the phone to his brother, MonaVie Founder, President, and CEO Dallin A. Larsen. Dallin said, “How’d you like to be my chief financial officer?”

Thorpe, 44, eagerly joined MonaVie’s executive team in September 2008, and it is with MonaVie that he has found the perfect combination of purpose and people.

“I have been so happy here. Every day I can’t wait to get started. I love the people. I love the company. I’ve had more fun than I deserve.”

Thorpe is obviously proud to be helping build the infrastructure of this phenomenally successful direct selling company. And assuming the role of financial steward is no small responsibility. MonaVie has achieved more than $1.6 billion in cumulative sales since launching in 2005, has approximately one million distributors in 12 countries and sees nothing but chart-topping growth in its future.

“We view ourselves as the service engine for our company,” Thorpe said of MonaVie’s finance division. “We view our colleagues as customers and certainly our distributors as our key customers. It’s our pleasure and responsibility to pay our distributors, and we want to do that well and on time.”

“But sometimes we’re also the ones who have to impose the rules of stewardship and take care and caution for implementing proper control on the organization so we’re around a decade from now and a century from now.”

Thorpe has brought greater stability to the young company by strengthening its financial reporting systems, and has promoted MonaVie’s global growth by traveling to its newest and soon-to-open markets.

“I’ve been out to visit all the new markets and have helped open banking relationships and get accounting and tax issues rolling. I’ve been able to play a meaningful part in the international expansion, and I enjoy it. While traveling, I always meet with distributors and hear their insight and issues. I find they’re a tremendous help.”

Overseas distributors may be surprised to get a dinner invitation from a travelling MonaVie executive, but Thorpe says the company philosophy encouraging such interaction is one of the great things about the way MonaVie operates.

“Network marketing when done right is just such a positive, uplifting industry to be in,” he said.

Thorpe is a Utah native, raised there and in Washington state. He started down the path to a finance career when he took an accounting course in high school. “I absolutely loved the class, which is kind of weird,” he jokes. “At the time, I thought I didn’t really want to be an accountant, but the language and substance of accounting really resonated with me.”

After high school, Thorpe traveled in Argentina for two years as a Mormon missionary, and then enrolled in the University of Utah. The finance major got a part-time job as a janitor for American Savings and Loan, cleaning up foreclosed properties, and by the time he graduated, was managing a portfolio of assets worth nearly $10 million for the savings and loan.

But he always planned on a graduate degree, and after a two-year assignment on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee in Washington D.C., earned an MBA from Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management. Thorpe and his wife, Gail, then came home to Utah, and he started a mortgage company with associates from the savings and loan.

He sold his stake after a year, joined an investment banking firm and then signed on with USANA Health Sciences, which sells nutritional and personal care products through direct sales. Thorpe handled investor relations, budgeting, forecasting, and served as treasurer. He also travelled internationally to establish connections for the Utah company. And it was at USANA that he met Dallin A. Larsen, then vice president of sales, and Randy Larsen, a consultant.

Coincidentally, Thorpe joined MonaVie and USANA at the same period in the companies’ histories. “The difference is MonaVie is about 20 times the size USANA was at the time. We’re immensely bigger, and that makes the challenges all the more meaningful.”

In 2000, Thorpe left to start Thorpe Capital Group, a boutique investment firm that raised money for startups and handled mergers and acquisitions.

In early 2007, with the recession looming, he began thinking about what facets of his work gave him the most fulfillment. He wanted to do more to help others and thought the public sector would provide that opportunity to give back. He accepted a leadership position with USTAR, a state-funded initiative that helps small technology companies with the resources they need to succeed. Unfortunately, Thorpe found his role too removed from the people he served.

Then the Larsens called, and Thorpe found what he’d been looking for.

Thorpe and his wife live in downtown Salt Lake City, and have a son, 20, who attends the University of Southern California.