Suzanne and Steve C.

Suzanne’s mom, Mary, discovered Shaklee in 1959, at the National Health Foundation convention in Pasadena, CA. She bought a pint of Shaklee Rug Cleaner from a Shaklee Distributor who had a booth there. The Shaklee lady kept following up with her until she agreed to become a Shaklee Distributor.

After starting to take several of the Shaklee supplements, Mary really liked the health benefits she saw in herself and her family. She told others about what she had found.  Her Shaklee business started to grow, and the rest is history.

I was introduced to Shaklee when Suzanne and I met and got married. She started putting the little green pills (Vita-Lea^®) by my breakfast and dinner plates, and I noticed that I started feeling better and had more energy.

Propagating good health was always a priority for us.  Suzanne was doing biomedical research for a pharmaceutical company and then the Environmental Protection Agency, and I was an assistant professor at the University of North Carolina Medical School, teaching nutrition and biochemistry to first-year medical students—

When we had our son, Suzanne wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, so we decided to follow in her mom’s footsteps and build a Shaklee business.  We saw Suzanne’s mom helping others achieve healthier lives and making more money in her Shaklee business than the two of us put together!  So we decided to give the opportunity a try.  We did have one big problem.  We didn’t have Suzanne’s mom’s outgoing personality.

We were like a couple of shy lab rats who had no people skills, no communication skills, and no business skills. But, we made the decision that we were going to succeed and never give up. It wasn’t easy, especially in the beginning, but as Dr. Shaklee said, “Your future will be exactly what you decide to make it.”

We learned the power of affirmations and positive thinking, which has helped us keep moving forward even when our business hits a bump in the road. We attended a meeting early on in our business and heard the speaker say, “If you argue for your limitations long enough, you get to keep them.” We didn’t want that to be us.

Success came as we stayed focused on our goals, especially during the difficult times. We also spent time each week working on personal development.

Both of us have always wanted to make a difference in the lives of others. Suzanne loves being an inspiration to others to live a healthy lifestyle andhelping people build health naturally for themselves and their families, plus reduce financial stress. I love helping others understand the biochemistry of nutrition so they can feel comfortable and confident when sharing the Shaklee products.

Shaklee has also enriched our personal lives with incredible incentives. We spent our honeymoon in Hawaii, and I had promised to take her back for our 10-year wedding anniversary. But when number 10 was just a year away, we realized we wouldn’t have the money to make the trip. Then Shaklee announced that the next Dream Trip would be to Hawaii—just in time for our 10^th anniversary! We were Directors and needed to develop four first-level Directors to qualify for the trip. We put our minds to it, and thanks to Shaklee I was able to keep my promise, and we celebrated our 10-year anniversary in Hawaii!

We have qualified for many trips during our Shaklee career.  Our trip to Switzerland was very special for us. Suzanne’s grandfather was from Switzerland and we were able to visit his birthplace of  with Suzanne’s parents, who also had qualified for the trip. It was very a special moment for all of us to see the lovely village where he grew up on the Rhine River.

It still amazes us how Shaklee has allowed us to create a business that has positively affected thousands of lives across the country, and enabled us to live a lifestyle that we would still be dreaming about if it were not for Shaklee. And now we can say, “The rest is history.”