John Anderson for A Day
One of the first things I noticed after giving John Anderson a thank-you hug, was WOW this guy has really great skin! Seriously, it’s radiant. I told him this and he said, “it’s because of what I’m putting on the inside of my body”. Just one of many pearls of wisdom that he shared with us on Super Saturday.
Our Nanaimo Team had the honour of hosting Isagenix Product Formulator John Anderson, along with Dr. Bill Andrews and Dr. Michael Colgan on October 19th in Nanaimo. Yes, all three of these amazing scientists in one room in our wee Island town.
Surreal!
John shared some fascinating background on how he got started in formulating and how Isagenix came to be. I scribbled volumes of notes and have pieced together the story he told as best I can below. He also shared some other useful tidbids worth passing along:
Cleansing – You receive 1000x the benefit on Day 2 of deep cleansing. If you eat regular food snacks such as almonds/eggs/celery on cleanse days you are wasting your time and money as it interferes with the process of ketosis.
Snacking – only eat a maximum of 250 calories worth of snacks on Cleanse days, spaced throughout the day. Always include the recommended 6 IsaSnacks (90 calories) and make up the balance with your choice of IsaDelight (50), e+ Shot (35) and/or Energenix (35).
Protein – he chose New Zealand whey because of the superior quality and purity of the raw material. In his testing, whey protein outperformed all other protein sources for how well our body is able to absorb and utilize it. But he did say that he believes we should get our protein from multiple sources and that he loves Canadian hemp!
Ionix Supreme – he shared that he recently purchased a very high powered microscope. When he looked at Ionix under this microscope he was amazed at how small the particles were (under 500 nanos for those that know what that means!) This confirmed for him why the nutrients in Ionix are so effective and usable by our bodies. You can’t get the same level of absorption by chewing botanicals.
Product B – in his words, “it’s not about living longer, it’s about having a better quality of life as you age”. He stressed the importance of the work they are doing with telomeres and how much of an impact this will make on world health. A percentage of Product B sales is being directed back into his research with Dr. Bill Andrews to improve the formula even further. Donations are being accepted to fund research: www.sens.org
With his usual warmth and understated passion, John shared that he has made more progress in the past couple years than he has in his 33 years of formulating. The results he has achieved in 12 years of Isagenix are nothing compared to what’s coming in the next few years. He says he’s so excited that he can barely sleep at night. He wakes up every day feeling inspired to get to his lab. He shared, “Every day is a new beginning”.
Back Story…
John’s grandfather, who was an organic farmer, introduced him to the concept that you have to take care of the soil to preserve the nutrition in food. As a child, his mother had a mineral concoction that he was made to drink for many ailments. So he grew up with this knowledge of the importance of nutrition and minerals.
His interest in formulating started when he got involved with an organic fertilizer company in Arizona. He was fascinated by the minerals that were present in their products, and he devised a way to extract the ionic trace minerals to create a tonic. He shared it with people who started reporting amazing results. The mineral drink was so popular that he set up a manufacturing lab and distributed it through GNC. This evolved into a major product that distributed nationally and sold 7 million bottles. John shares that the Green Bay Packers football team was using his mineral tonic when they won the Super Bowl two years in a row.
John eventually started getting requests from companies to develop products for them. Because he wasn’t a marketer and preferred to be in the lab, he chose to become a product formulator. He ended up formulating approximately 2500 products for over 600 different companies.
In 1981, his step-father introduced him to Jim Coover who was starting a network marketing company called The Cambridge Plan International. His step-father was getting involved at the start-up stage and wanted John to join too. So John signed up and began to share their products very passively, surprisingly earning $18,000 with his first cheque. He liked the concept of network marketing because it’s simply people sharing their personal story and testimonials.
Through his connection with GNC he saw many products do well on the shelf and many others fail. He formulated for numerous other network marketing companies. Many came to him with a desire to create a product but they weren’t willing to use premium ingredients because of cost. They always wanted him to cut quality to make the products less expensive. He turned down hundreds of companies because he didn’t want to compromise.
He refused to use soy because he didn’t have a good feeling about it. His intuition was telling him that it wasn’t healthy even before all the research started showing the link between breast cancer and soy. He has never had soy in any of his manufacturing plants. John explains that the damaging effects of soy are present only in the protein. Soy lecithin is extracted from the fats.
During his career in formulating he travelled to 25 different countries, visiting labs that do research into herbs and botanicals. He spent months at a time in India studying Ayurveda and learning about the beneficial properties of phytochemicals. At this time the Universities in North America were very behind with this research. So much of what John knows about herbs and botanicals was taught to him during his travels by over 60 top scientists and PhD’s from around the world.
In 1998, he was bitten by a brown recluse spider. He got delirious with fever and was sick for many days at home alone, thinking he had the flu. He ended up in hospital for 45 days and was given major doses of antibiotics. The site of the bite was his foot, which became terribly infected and developed necrosis. At one point he was scheduled for surgery to amputate his foot. He was so desperate to save his foot that he tried to remove his IV’s and leave the hospital. Eventually, a plastic surgeon got involved and John ended up having multiple surgeries to save the foot.
However, the venom and infections destroyed his health. He went blind in one eye due to damage to the optic nerves. He developed diabetes and his kidneys were compromised. He sold his product manufacturing company and retired from his hospital bed.
A friend told John about a substance called Shilajit that he believed could help with the damaged eyesight. His friend knew a researcher in Banglador, India that was working with Shilajit, so John travelled to India to meet him. His interest now was to search the world to find natural ingredients that would help his body recover from the toxicity of the spider bite. In the end, his eyesight did restore.
He started formulating products based on his travels and research. He set up a new small manufacturing plant and re-hired some of his old employees. One evening, he was at Macaroni Grill with his wife Cher (then an employee and graphic artist at his company) and they were doodling different ideas for a name for his new products. He wrote “Isogenix” and then Cher drew an extended strike through the X. But he didn’t like the sound of ISO, so he changed the O to an A for Anderson!
His new products were very effective and he wanted to get them out to more people. He chose to market his new products through network marketing because he had a history with this industry. A friend suggested that John talk to someone he knew who was a very experienced and successful marketer. John agreed and got on the phone with this person, and it wasn’t until they were talking that John realized it was Jim Coover, who he had worked with decades prior.
He met with Jim and Kathy Coover and they asked him, “what is the one ingredient that has the most impact, what is the miracle botanical?” He replied that the body is complex and there was not just one thing, it had to be a system. Jim asked how long it would take to develop such a system, suggesting perhaps 18 months. John replied that he could have it done in a week or two. Jim thought John had flipped out!
John told Jim that they would need a dense nutritional shake and specified that the best protein would be New Zealand whey because of its purity. He was concerned about releasing toxins from the cells and how they would need ingredients to help to eliminate these toxins from the body. He also recognized that there would be a need to stabilize blood sugar during the fasting cleanse.
10 Days later, John had a system put together. Both Jim and Kathy took a box of the generically labeled bottles and asked how they should take the products. John told them to cleanse for two days, then do 5 days of shakes, then cleanse for another two. That is how the 9 day Cleansing & Fat Burning system was born.
12 people initially tried the 9 Day system. Jim had incredible success and John lost over 18lbs. Jim and Kathy both recognized the system was amazing and it needed to be marketed, but John told Jim that he needed help. He knew that this wasn’t a product that could just be sold from store shelves. He knew that people would need personal support to use the system.
At the time, John had a collection of motorcycles. He told Jim that if he were to come on board and help him market his system, then Jim could have one of his motorcycles. So Jim was seduced into Isagenix with a bronze Road King Harley Davidson!
“If I hadn’t been bitten by that brown recluse spider, we wouldn’t all be here. Bad things can turn out to be very good things” ~ John Anderson
In good health,
~kristi
© Kristi Bellis and Bluleaf Living, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Kristi Bellis and Bluleaf Living with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.