What a Drop of Blood Showed Me at 22: My 1984 Shaklee Story

In 1984 I was 22 years old, living in a fraternity house at Colorado State University, and nutrition was the last thing on my mind. There was plenty of beer and pizza, with an occasional decent meal thrown in for good measure.

Then my mother discovered Shaklee, and she wasn't about to let it go.

That's how a skeptical college kid ended up staring at his own blood under a microscope. More than 40 years later, I'm still using what she handed me. Here's how it happened.

Mom became very enthusiastic about the products and kept encouraging me to give them a serious try. Like most 22-year-olds, I wasn't convinced. I was young. I generally felt healthy. Why would I need nutritional supplements?

But Mom was persistent.

Finally, I agreed to give Shaklee 30 days.

My mother was also interested in something called live blood cell analysis. She would prick my finger, place a drop of blood under a microscope, and we would look at what showed up on the screen.

I still remember that first look. To my untrained eye, many of my red blood cells didn't look the way I expected healthy cells to look. Some appeared flattened or clustered together, and there seemed to be very little activity.

Whatever scientific conclusions could or couldn't be drawn from what we were seeing, it made a tremendous impression on me.

Then Mom said, essentially, "Stay faithful to the Shaklee products for 30 days, and then let's look again."

So I did.

For 30 days, I consistently used the Shaklee nutrition products she recommended. And something happened that I hadn't expected.

I felt better.

That's saying something when you're 22 and already think you feel pretty good. I noticed more energy. I was sleeping well. I simply had a greater sense of well-being.

On day 30, Mom pricked my finger again, put another drop of blood under the microscope, and we looked.

What I saw appeared dramatically different from what I remembered a month earlier. The red blood cells looked rounder and more separated. I also remember seeing much more movement among the white blood cells.

Was I a scientist? No. Was this a controlled medical experiment? Of course not.

But I knew two things: I could see a difference, and I could feel a difference.

For a 22-year-old college student, that was powerful. It started a relationship with Shaklee that has now lasted more than four decades.

While I was discovering the products, my mother was building a Shaklee business, and she was doing very well. She worked alongside a neighbor who became her business partner. She went to a Shaklee convention in San Francisco, which was tremendously exciting for her, and she even earned a car through the company.

I could see her excitement and what Shaklee meant to her. But there was one problem.

I wasn't my mother.

I was much more reserved. Approaching people, presenting a business opportunity, sitting across a kitchen table making my case: none of that came naturally to me.

So for many years, I simply accepted it. I loved Shaklee. I struggled with the business.

Even though building the business didn't fit me, my appreciation for Shaklee nutrition never went away. What impressed me most over the years was the company's emphasis on quality.

I remember times when a product was hard to get because ingredients or batches didn't meet Shaklee's standards. There might have been enormous demand, and the principle was still, in effect: if it doesn't meet our standards, we don't sell it.

That mattered to me. Today Shaklee calls it Beyond Organic. Every new botanical is screened for over 350 contaminants, pesticides and impurities, 3 times more than U.S. Pharmacopeia standards, and they run over 100,000 quality tests a year.

Our food supply has changed since I was that college kid. So have our lifestyles, and so have the things we're exposed to every day. For me, Shaklee became one way of being intentional about the nutrition I put into my body.

And after more than 40 years, I still use it.

Here's the part I never could have imagined in 1984.

That quiet, reserved kid grew up to become an Internet marketer. I learned to communicate through websites, email, video and online systems, and my YouTube videos have now been viewed more than 5 million times.

Now we also have artificial intelligence, something that would have sounded like science fiction when my mother was building her business.

That's when it clicked. The trouble I had with network marketing all those years ago wasn't Shaklee. It was the method.

In 1984, reaching people meant phone calls, approaching friends and acquaintances, holding meetings, or handing someone a brochure. Today one helpful video can reach hundreds or even thousands of people.

Instead of chasing people who don't want to hear what I have to say, I can share useful information with people who are already searching for answers. They can find me.

For someone with my personality, that changes everything.

Sometimes I think about that 22-year-old at Colorado State. He had no idea where that first bottle of Shaklee would lead. He couldn't have imagined YouTube, smartphones or AI.

But he learned something important: your health is one of your greatest assets. Without it, so many of the other things we work for become far less meaningful.

At the time, I thought Mom was simply trying to get her college-age son to take some vitamins. Looking back, she gave me something much bigger: the idea that taking responsibility for your health can change the way you live, and that helping other people do the same can give your work a greater purpose.

That is my Shaklee story. More than 40 years later, I'm still writing it.

If you're curious what I've been using all these years and why I trust it, I put together a free overview of the Shaklee health system. Get the free overview here.

P.S. Nobody's going to pressure you here. Read the overview at your own pace, and if you have a question, I'm happy to answer it.