Please describe your business, and explain your personal/business mission.
Natural Health International is a vertically integrated natural products business that grows, manufactures and distributes nutraceuticals, functional foods and other health products with operations in ten countries. Our vision is to be a Global Visionary Company dedicated to leading and providing people with all the tools needed for complete health and understanding of all the issues affecting their health. We’re about much more than product sales. Our missions are:
- to form a one-on-one relationship with each customer,
- to communicate directly,
- to increase our customers’ understanding of their bodies and
- to foster complete wellbeing through nourishing foundation or core health.
Our belief is that if we do all of that right, then sales will follow.
Personally I have extended this and started, with the help of some of the leading integrative doctors in each field of holistic health, two non-profits called Awakes and the Awakes Foundation.
What is your background and what lead you to this business?
I always had a strong interest in health, being an athlete and personal trainer and I studied nutrition while at school for business. This combined with an amazing series of synchronistic events, which included getting an order before I had started the business, gave me no choice but to take advantage of the opportunity. It was later on when I started to practice meditation, studying a lot of metaphysics, psychology and spirituality, that my complete understanding of what I wanted to do with the business and create a non-profit evolved. People often think that you need to go down either the profit or non-profit path but you just have to look at the evolution of B Corps and people like Bill Gates who used his for-profit to fund his non-profit vision.
How does a mind/body approach apply to your business and your lifestyle?
If you look at the concept of Mind/Body purely from a business perspective, whether I believe in it or not doesn’t matter as it is the future. So as a businessman I either adapt and plan for where the market is heading, or get left behind. Luckily for me after having tried nearly every modality and working with many of the top integrative practitioners in Europe, Asia and the United States I have been fortunate enough to both experience, see and research analytical data and know that the Mind/Body connection and these modalities are valid. Now I am not saying every practitioner knows how to use them properly, but they do work, in the right hands. So naturally this shapes where we are going. In fact we have found that Femmenessence not only balances hormones but also the meridians and next time you buy one of our products, open it up and look on the inside of the box.
Personally I have seen how profound the Mind/Body approach can be. I have been very fortunate to work with two Neuro Emotional Technique (NET) experts (Peter Bablis and Simone Bosman). Peter is a DC, ND, LAc, PhD and has a diploma in Homeopathy, Nutrition and Herbalism, so he has an understanding of a range of modalities, but he always uses NET first, because if you don’t address the Mind/Emotional component all the physical issues just come back. In fact I have even spoken to psychiatrists who use this technique and say they have in some cases taken 3 minutes to get something to a patients consciousness which they hadn’t been able to in 3 months of work.
What makes your business unique and sets you apart from your competition?
Probably our clinical research. So many natural companies say their products are clinically proven and yet the research wasn’t done on their actual product, was done on such a small sample size that it isn’t scientifically valid, the research wasn’t double blind placebo controlled or wasn’t published in a medical journal. The silly thing is we know the rules orthodox medicine plays by and yet we keep ignoring them. If your product works prove it under their rules… and that is what we did with our flag ship product Femmenessence which is actually the first natural product with published clinical research demonstrating statistically significant effects on hormones in peri and post menopausal women. That is why we now have Dr Tori Hudson, who is regarded as the top Naturopathic Doctor in the US in women’s health, on our medical board and even had Dr Christiane Northrup refer to our research in her book Woman’s Bodies Woman’s Wisdom. PS if you want an amazing understanding of the Mind/Body connection from a medical perspective read that book or The Wisdom of Menopause which is a must read for every woman… and partner.
What are you looking forward to in the future for your business?
Getting the word out about Femmenessence to as many people as possible and empowering them with understanding of how the body works. So many companies educate people on what products do, not what the body needs in totality. For that reason people think fish oil is the only thing you need for heart health and calcium and vitamin D for bone health. When people are empowered with an understanding of how their body works, their purchase decisions change. The irony is that if people had perfect knowledge it would be a win/win/win situation. As an example for Bone Health customers would be buying not just Calcium and Vitamin D, but products with Zinc, Manganese, B-12, Vitamin K and all the building blocks for bone, the would be eating more green leafy vegetables and probably a green product like our pH Quintessence and most importantly they would be getting Femmenessence which supports hormones and thus osteoblast/ osteoclast cells. So now they are buying 3 products and happy about it because it is the perfect solution to their problem and they know why they are taking it. The store and companies are happy because they are selling more products!
What is one of your favorite stories about a customer benefiting from your services?
Where do I start? There are so many wonderful stories, like the girl having her first cycle in 2.5 years after 2 weeks on Femmenessence, to a woman having a baby after trying for 5 years but my recent favorite is the woman who had to sleep with 2 towels under her at night because of night sweats, hadn’t had sex in 2 years because of vaginal dryness, was on anti-depressants and had no energy. After three months on Femmenessence she sent me a two page letter thanking me as she was now off the anti-depressants, didn’t need the towels, had resumed having sex with her husband and her energy levels had soared! In addition she wanted to thank me for having the service where she could ring up and talk to one of our staff doctors. She had been on the phone for half an hour with one of our doctors and they had made a follow-up call, so she took the same amount of time to write me a thank you letter.
Who can benefit from your products/services?
We have three products for women at each stage of life. One for younger women called Femmenessence MacaHarmony to regulate cycles, for PMS, fertility and other hormone imbalance issues. Femmenessence MacaLife for peri menopausal symptoms and Femmenessence MacaPause for post menopausal women to support heart, bone and mental health. We have a men’s product called Revolution Macalbrium for hormone levels, libido, energy and heart health. Herbatonin – the only plant based melatonin product on the market and an entire Original Himalayan Crystal Salt line for cooking, trace mineral Sole therapy, bathing and even our inhaler for lung health which was featured on Dr Oz.
For more info on this San Francisco based company: Natural Health International
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