Writing a Stellar IsaBody Essay

Trainers: Board Chairman Scientific Advisory Board Dr. Dennis Harper & Vice President of Marketing Joel Bikman

You’re in the home stretch of the 2009 IsaBody Challenge™! Now it’s time to create a stellar essay and get your entry ready before the June 26 deadline. Listen in as Dr. Dennis Harper & Joel Bikman share tips on how to share your incredible success to help you stand out among the rest!

>> Kjersti Cote: Alight. Well, good evening everyone, and welcome to our Thursday night product training with Isagenix International. My name is Kjersti Cody, your host, a pleasure to be here with all of you tonight. Tonight’s call is really bringing home all of the last final details of the IsaBody Challenge.

This has been an amazing challenge so far just with a little here and a little there with what people have shared with me. I really truly feel that this is going to be the best IsaBody Challenge that we’ve had yet so far, and I think that corporate has all of their work cut out for them to decide on those participants and the finalists and, of course, our grand prize winner for this year. It’s going to be a lot of fun.

Here with us tonight is Dr. Dennis Harper, our board chairman of our scientific advisory board, as well as Joel Bikman, vice president of marketing from corporate head, our world headquarters there in Chandler, Arizona. And we’re going to kind of do a call tonight that’s a little bit two parts. First, we’ll have Dr. Harper on. He’s going to be talking about your body, the changes that’s been taking place. It’s going to be very exciting.

And then, of course, wrapping it up with Joel talking about writing that winning essay, because, obviously, everybody that’s on the line tonight that’s participating you know that the essay is very important part too of this challenge.

So with that I would love to introduce Dr. Harper to everybody. He is just a wonderful gentleman. I’ve had so much fun getting to know him over the last several years within Isagenix, and when he came to Isagenix, when introduced to Isagenix I should say, he was very, very skeptical of the company, the program, the cleansing aspect, and, of course, it was introduced to him by his brother. And to prove his brother wrong he did a nine day cleanse, and that’s where it all began. And sense then he has sat on our scientific advisory board being the board chairman, but based on his work prior to Isagenix, he has been in general medical practice for about almost 25 years now with about 20 years of that being devoted in the practice of complementary medicine. And Dr. Harper was one of three people that spoke to Senator Hatch and got the DeShay Act started, which this was an act that saved the health food industry from over regulation by the FDA. This is a huge moment in history.

He was also on the Utah Medical Association, or, excuse me; he was a member of the Unproven Medical Procedures Committee for the Utah Medical Association. He was also a member of the licensing board for the state of Utah. He was the chairman of that same board as well for a time, and he now lives in California right on the coast. And not only is he a practicing doctor, a part of Isagenix, but he’s also an author. I know he’s got some things in the works right now, so we’re grateful to Dr. Harper for all of his hard work and his dedication in helping us educate ourselves on our bodies, on Isagenix, and supplementation, and everything, so with that, Dr. Harper, good evening and welcome to the call.

>> Dr. Dennis Harper: Good evening. It’s nice to be back again.

>> Kjersti: Great to have you, and can you believe that we’re nearing the end of this IsaBody Challenge for 2009?

>> Dr. Harper: No, I can’t. In fact it seems like just yesterday we started our very first one, and I can’t believe that we’ve already had what is this, our third one now?

>> Kjersti: This is our third one. I know. I know pretty impressive. I know when I was thinking about Mark Macey, you know, being our 2007 IsaBody Challenge winner, and I keep thinking he was the winner last year, but he wasn’t. I mean, we had, again, gentleman last year. I think his name was–

>> Dr. Harper: Anthony Ditaranto.

>> Kjersti: Yea, that’s right. Anthony Ditaranto. Yea, and 2008 grand prize winner, and, of course, now we’ve got our third grand prize winner that’ll be announced here in just nine weeks; nine short weeks. But now the challenge ends here on the 15th of June, just next Monday. And so, Dr. Harper, I know that there’s been thousands of people that have registered for this. There’s a lot of people listening in grasping for, you know, any final golden nuggets to really take them through to the very end, and I know that a lot of people have maybe possibly had the mindset of June 15th being their desitination date for getting heir body trim and lean and clean internally. But what’s your whole take on this when someone joins a challenge like this and sets that destination as June 15th? You know, what’s your whole take on it being a destination versus a journey?

>> Dr. Harper: Well, clearly it shouldn’t be your destination. It’s more of a journey. As a matter of fact, having gone through the cleanse now for this period of time for these people, this is really the beginning. This is the beginning. Everyday that you get up is the beginning of the rest of your life, and so it’s important to remember that. And I’ve had patients for many, many, many years, obviously, and it’s interesting when I would start them on a medication. None of them ever asked when I was going to take them off the medication. They just assumed that I would let them know when that time was going to take place, and so they would just continue to do it. When we would look at cleansing processes that Isagenix has developed, it seems that they’ve forgotten that same principle there, and that is that no, this is a way of life.

This is a way of maintaining and keeping a good healthy body. We all know that most of our body, including part of neurological system, turns over at least one time in seven years. So we have the very best body we can probably have after staying strictly with Isagneix for a period of seven years. So at the minimum you want to be looking at doing a good Isagenix cleansing program and maintenance program for at least seven years.

>> Kjersti: Well, you say that seven year turn around with the body, you know, besides a few cells here and there that never go away. And I think that, I look at Jimmy Smith. Jimmy Smith found Isagenix seven years ago, and I’ve seen pictures of Jimmy before Isagenix, and, of course, remember him. I don’t think that guy has aged not a day since he’s been within this company, and as a matter of fact, he has so much spring in his step in any even he gets announced. I mean the guy sprints up on there. He’s 81 years-young, and it’s just pretty powerful to watch that happen. So now when it comes to the changes that have taken place internally for these participants, you know, some of the things that they’ve been experiencing is obviously increased energy, maybe better sleeping habits, maybe just an overall sense of well-being, and, of course, you know, losing pounds, losing inches. But what are some of the other things that have taken place internally that we can’t see based on, you know, being inside of us?

>> Dr. Harper: Well, there’s no doubt anytime you start doing a cleanse you’re going to start changing the entire body chemistry. As you introduce something into your body, your body then will react accordingly. And since this is healthy good nutritionally dense foods, then your body will almost always universally react in a favorable way. As far as other things, we could go into an awful lot of things, but then we wouldn’t be able to reproduce it because that would be making claims. So I want to stay away form particular area.

But one thing that you can realize just is frequently just your mental processes are better. You’re at least with me, I saw my muscle mass increase by three pounds over a period of five weeks, and this was without doing any exercise. Not that I don’t recommend exercise, I just wanted to try just the Isagenix by itself. Right now they should be developing more muscle mass, and this is something that could last a long time, because one pound of muscle mass will burn approximately four pounds of fat during the year. So you start seeing how important maintaining that muscle mass is. And that’s one of the reasons why older people as they start losing their muscle mass, they start gaining weight as well, and they get colder, because muscle is one of the prime energy producers as well as heat producers in the body. So it’s important to maintain that muscle mass the very best that you possibly can, and, of course, Isagenix, certainly for me, did just the reverse. It not only maintained it, it increased it. So for me that’s really a good positive note.

>> Kjersti: Absolutely. Well, let’s talk about supplementation just for a second, because this has been a huge transition, you know, over the last, I would say, decade or two. I know you’ve seen this, obviously, getting involved with Senator Hatch with the DeShay Act. What kind of transitions are we seeing within the medical world versus the supplemental world? You know, and I know that there was some complications a couple years back, so enlighten us on the whole view of daily supplementation.

>> Dr. Harper: Well, it used to be that if a physician like myself started getting involved with nutritional products like recommending vitamins and minerals and vitamin C and amino acids and stuff, that they would start looking cross-eyed at his license, and in many instances might actually revoke his license to practice medicine, because they did not consider that to be good evidence based medicine. Now in, I think–well, when I went to medical school, the taught that we had the very best diets in the world, and that nobody needed to be taking supplements period. Well, that was back in 1981 through ‘85. And I think finally back in about the year 2005, I believe–I can’t be certain on the date. Either the JAMA or the New England Journal of Medicine came out with an article stating you know what? Maybe we all better start taking a vitamin pill daily. And that was just the beginning of them starting to understand how important it is. Now for whatever reason, we physicians seem to be a little bit behind in regards to understanding nutrition. Any farmer knows that if you feed your animals good healthy animals. If you feed them crap, you’re going to have crappy animals. So for us physicians not to be realizing that it’s just-it makes you wonder why.

But it’s starting to change, and the reason why it’s changing is because so many patients are literally pushing their doctors in that direction. They’re going in and asking about supplementation now and forcing their doctors to learn and maybe even try supplementation, so it is changing. It took me three years to change the law in the state of Utah to where a physician could use an alternative or complementary medicine without any danger to his license. It was a long three years, but at least it got finally passed. Now it’s getting to be more accepted, and they’re actually starting to start to teach these things in some of the medical schools as well as far as nutrition, and then I believe just recently the nutritionist which we would expect them to be the absolute gurus on nutrition, they are finally starting to understand that it’s important to use supplements as well, because they were taught the same way we were that we have good healthy diets in the United States, and that all you need is good food. Well, and then actually that’s true. All we need is good healthy food, but we don’t have good healthy food anymore. We haven’t good healthy food forever. We don’t have good clean water. We don’t have clean air, so you just can turn the basics and try to get better any longer.

>> Kjersti: Right. Right, so, I mean, the power of supplementation, I mean, obviously it’s really swinging in the forefront of things. I know that it’s been around for many, many years. I remember my grandmother, who’s like 82 now, when I was a little girl, I remember being at her house and I cut my finger with a butcher knife. And she had one of my aunts or uncles run out into the garden and pick comfrey. And she took the green leafed comfrey and chopped it up into thin fine like, you know, mush, put it on my cut, and wrapped it with an ace bandage. And I thought this is the most bizarre band aid I’ve ever seen. So anyhow, my grandmother has loved herbs and supplementation for a long time. And so it’s pretty powerful to see this transition take place. So as these participants have been supplementing, have been using Isagenix as a source of nutrition, as food, as supplementation, how important is it for these individuals and really everybody in general to continue with that daily supplementation, and the occasional nine day cleanse?

>> Dr. Harper: Well, I kind of changed my mind on this very early when I started using Isagenix. I now no longer consider Isagenix as a supplement. I consider food, regular food, as my supplement and Isagenix as my staple. And I think that’s actually a much better way for people associated with Isagenix to view this, because if they will maintain and continue to use their Isagenix foods, which are nutritionally dense, then they can supplement with the other foods, which are not so nutritionally dense. So I think that’s a better idea. As far as doing cleanses, yes.

Unfortunately we don’t live in a very clean environment any longer, and I’m not an environmentalist but I will tell you that it’s very clear based upon studies and fat analysis and things like that that toxins are being produced at a greater degree in the environment now, and that the ultimate repository, these toxins tend to be in the human body, because we’re at the top of the food chain. So we do need to be cleansing on a very periodic basis. I generally recommend about every three months to do a nine day cleanse. Once a person has gotten themselves into a good healthy state, they will kind of feel when they need to do that. They’ll realize it’s time to go back and get really strict with this again, and do another nine day cleanse or a 30 day cleanse to where they can start feeling the changes that take place and get back to where they feel the best .and so on average about every three months.

>> Kjersti: Yea, absolutely. And I love that. That’s what I do every nine day or three moths. You know, occasionally I’ll do like a one day cleanse here and there, but yea, so daily supplementation, but the whole concept of cleansing periodically because of the environment that we live in today. And so it looks like our participants have one, two, three; about three days left. You know, any kinds of words of advice in the final push here to the very end, and of course, what they have to look forward to or get to look forward to as they continue their Isagenix journey?

>> Dr. Harper: Well, the first thing I would say is congratulations to all these people. I mean they’ve finally chosen to make a difference in their life with a company that truly has a product that will make a difference in their life. It won’t just give them a short-term weight loss and an empty promise of tomorrow. No, Isagenix will continue to deliver as long as they continue to use the Isagenix products. And that’s why I go back to stating please start using Isagenix as your staple and food as your supplement. That’s very important. I think you’re going to have a much better result if you don’t that.

In fact, if you do go back and start eating like you did before, you will fill like you are poisoned. Remember that, and that will just take place. And when that happens, you remember these words that I’m speaking tonight that yes, indeed, you’re going to feel that way, because your body had gotten away from those things, and has no longer developed the tolerance towards those particular types of foods. And so when you ingest those again, you’re probably going to get sick.

>> Kjersti: Yea, absolutely. Well, I just want to thank you for being with us, and for helping to educate all of us. I know that you were on our calls several times during this challenge helping people to, you know, help to set goals and to move forward and to maximize their success, so we’re grateful that you could be with us tonight. And, yea, absolutely, and I know we have Joel Bikman on the line as well. And now that we’ve kind of gotten a nutritional look and a nutritional aspect of this challenge and what’s been taking place, what to look forward to, and where to go from this point forward, you know, half of the judging is your before and after. Get your camera ready for Monday night or actually Tuesday morning, I guess. And then, of course, the other 50% is the written essay, and this is probably the most touching aspect of the entire challenge I’m sure by far. Joel, would you agree?

>> Joel Bikman: You know, it really is. It’s really humbling to see the kind of changes that the people; have made. In fact, Dr. Harper, it’s such a privilege and a pleasure to share this call. He had two members of his family in the 2007 IsaBody Challenge, and it was just touching not only the stories but the kind of help that Dennis and his lovely wife were able to provide.

>> Kjersti: Oh, I know. Isn’t that cool. Oh, my goodness. I forgot all about that, Dr. Harper. That’s very cool. Well, let me–Joel, before you continue on with the writing this winning essay and giving everybody the pointers here, I want to introduce you to everybody. And for those of you who are brand new to Isagenix, Joel Bikman is our VP of marketing, and he hails from Canada. Actually, he’s a Canadian. He is a proud father of three beautiful children. He’s been married to his wife, Alexi, for nearly 15 years. He’s been with Isagenix for the last two-and-a-half years. He has been such an amazing asset to all of us. What he’s been involved with in Isagenix over the last couple of years is branding, sales, support materials, being involved in the promotions, our beautiful website, corporate communications, working with our field, and of course, other marketing support. But prior to Isagenix, he was an ad-man. He worked with one of the hottest advertising agencies in the country, and he holds a bachelor’s degree in communication with them, BA from Brigham Young University. So we’re grateful to have him a part of our Isagenix team and family. So, Joel, welcome to the call.

>> Joel: Well, thank you. I should have you now introduce all of my calls. Everything would go a lot smoother. [Laughter]

>> Joel: Sounds so much more impressive when you say it.

>> Kjersti: Well, now let’s get to this essay here. This is a big deal, and, of course, people really want to get this essay right. It’s 50% of that judging. So what is it going to take for someone to write that winning essay?

>> Joel: Well, with your permission I’m actually going to talk a little bit about the whole package including the pictures and just how to make the absolute best impression. The people that have won, they’ve told a story. And it’s been in their own words, and it started with both from a picture standpoint, from an essay standpoint. They made sure that it was their best stuff, because we have thousands of people that are going to be submitting, thousands of registrants, that are going to be submitting pictures and will be submitting essays and will be submitting collages, and we’ve had DVDs, and we’ve had people set up websites, and blogs, and have got incredible amounts of press and other publicity, and they package it.

And so every year it gets a little bit more sophisticated and a little bit more impressive and that much harder for those of the corporate staff that judge to really identify who’s had the biggest change. And so let me start really quickly with the after picture. Hopefully, you’ve all taken before pictures. If not, unfortunately, it’s a little late to get before pictures. But from an after picture, make sure that you shoot it on a light colored or at least some kind of solid background. Take a front picture, a back, and a profile. And at least do one of those holding an appropriate newspaper so that we can verify the date. I’ll practice all of this by saying if you have any questions go to isabodychallenge.com. That has every bit of information. It has the rules. It has a fantastic flyer that you can download. It’s right on the front page in the resources section. It’s’ called creating a stellar IsaBody Challenge after, and after is in quotes. So you have to imagine me doing air-quotes with after.

Make sure that you get a great after picture. If you have lifestyle pictures of before, during, after especially where you were more active and things like that, that helps tell a complete story. And we won’t be able to return those pictures to you, but we’d love to make sure that they’re safe and sound and aren’t wrinkled, bent, or anything. So if you can mail them in clear sandwich bags just between some pieces of cardboard, that way they won’t get damaged. Now on to the essay. It’s all in the first sentence and paragraph. Make sure that your strongest statement is right up front.

Anthony Ditaranto, who was our grand prize winner last year, led off with this statement by his grandfather that he needed to take care of himself and just the kind of impact that that had made on him and just tore him apart, because he was a young man in college who was already nearly 400 pounds. And his grandfather was saying you got to take care of yourself. Well, that just captured our attention. And then once we saw the pictures and all the other supporting information, it became a much more straight forward decision for us, but you need to be real. Talk about not only how you felt but how others felt and how others were supportive and interactive with you. Talk about the people that helped make it possible. And focus on the impact that the challenges made in your life, both the physical component and emotional. If you kept a journal or a diary or a blog, you could share some of those entries. But I know I’m throwing a lot at you, but you really need to be efficient, because it’s supposed to be 500 words or less. And if it’s much longer than that, you run the risk of one of the judges not being able to get through it. We’re going to have thousands to go through, so, again, make sure it’s your strongest stuff.

Include your before and after weight, height, and other supporting materials in the essay. And if you’re in the group category, that’s new this year, where you could be all people. We’ve had firemen. We’ve had policemen. We have a group of people at work, and ladies’ clubs, and book clubs, and different things like that. It’s only one essay for the group. You could provide some short paragraph on each person’s progress, but you’re definitely going to want to have larger them for that group. And I think overall it’s just really be creative with your presentation. If you’ve got a video of in-process or beforehand, a poster board, or collage, really anything that you can think of. We really had some great people just with incredible scrapbooking skills. Anything that you can think of that will help tell that story, that’s just vital. This is your chance to show and demonstrate the kind of power that these products when used consistently, that they really have.

If you want some examples, if you want some impressions, or some ideas, if you go to IsaBody Challenge, you’ll not only see the write-up of how our communications people wrote up the stories, but you’ll see in every single story in the right column, you’ll see their IsaBody essay in their own words. And so there are dozens of those now from 2007 and especially from 2008. We’ve just got some–you’ll see why they were so noticeable for us, and if you read the rules, what you’re going to see is there is some initial judging where we go through and we identify the top three in each category.

But it’s absolutely imperative that you continue on with your Isagenix regimen, because the final judging where we identify the first, second, third in each category is done the day or a couple of days before the actual award on stage. And so it’s absolutely imperative that you show up just looking as good as you possibly can, and working on your short story so that when you walk in and meet with the judges, and we believe it’s going to be from our senior executive team this year, hopefully including the Coovers if we can. It’s going to be imperative that you walk in with just the best story possible, because you’re only going to have a minute or so to talk to them. And, you know, we’ve got a $150,000.00 in prizes, and we hear from hundreds of people each year that they would have done this, and they would have been absolutely thrilled without any kind of awards.

The Coovers just have the biggest hearts, and they absolutely–this year they came back and said we need to give away more money. And so we’ve got a couple of special awards. A couple, might be handful, that the Coovers can just kind of deiced, hey, these people aren’t necessarily in our top three in each category, but, man they had incredible, incredible stories. And we have for the grand prize; we have something so special and so amazing. I think it’s going to blow everybody’s mind. I know I’m rambling, but I can not get more excited. This is the payoff for the entire year worth of work. I mean, I just go, and I just have the time of my life with these IsaBody Challenge finalists.

>> Kjersti: Ooh! I am so excited, because, you know what you gave a lot of good points. I mean, even though that it ends the 15th, and you get your after picture taken then, you work on your essay. By the way, the essay needs to be in, again, at what date? What is the date on the essay being completed and sent in?

>> Joel: We need everything by June 26th, so we’re giving you 11 days for it to get here at Isagenix.

>> Kjersti: Eleven days.

>> Joel: Yes, so don’t wait until the 15th. You could start writing that essay right now.

>> Kjersti: Yea, right. Okay, good. That’s right. Okay, right, so if it ends on the 15th, which it does, you have till the 26th to get your essay in, but it has to be like into other company, so you got to mail it before that. So that’s a good thing, and then also too I had no idea that the grand prize winner was actually, or is it first, second, and third place that selected upon arriving at the annual event and probably visiting or seeing? Because, gosh, if that’s the case, someone could be down another five, ten, fifteen, twenty pounds when you guys actually see them based on their after photos and their essay.

>> Joel: Absolutely, and the other exciting thing is the grand prize winner is selected from the first place winners in each category, so before we had just a grand prize who wasn’t in a first, second, or third. Last year, Anthony Ditaranto, was technically in the 18 to 35 category, but he was the grand prize winner instead. And so this time what we thought would be even more exciting was we’ll have the first place winners, and from those there’ll be an incremental $5,000.00 given to the person that we deem the grand prize winder. And that’s where it’s going to be really fun. And I’ll just say, you’ve got to be there. [Laughter] If you weren’t planning on going, anybody on the phone that wasn’t planning on being at the celebration, this will be worthwhile just for the way that we’re going to be choosing the grand prize wiener. It’s going to be awesome.

>> Kjersti: Yea. Oh, I’m so excited. It’s going to be a blast to see, and too by the way, upon your guys’ decision on the finalists, those people, they will receive a call correct? And they do get invited, and does Isagenix take care of them while they’re down there in Anaheim?

>> Joel: Oh, for the people that are in our of the tip three, they’re all guaranteed they’re in the money, and we fly them out; the winner and one other person. We fly them out. We put them up in the hotel. We pay for their meals for–I’m not exactly sure. We pay for some number of meals, and they get invited to the Gala Celebration, and it’s really all expenses paid.

>> Kjersti: Wow!

>> Joel: We do it up and do it right.

>> Kjersti: I know. This is like such a big deal. I remember talking to a personal trainer in 2007 when we first did it. Of course, we did that challenge in three months. Now everybody gets around six months to do this, in five to six months. And the guy, the trainer, I said you need to put this in your club, you know, get all of your clients onto this program, and get them registered. It doesn’t cost them anything except for, you know, you got to use the products. I mean, they’ve got to be feeding their body and eating the Isagenix. And he said, “How much did you say they were giving away?” And he just could not get over the amount of money that Isagenix is willing to put forth here just in celebration of people taking on that challenge of getting healthy and lean and clean. So it’s just been a lot of fun. And kudos to you, Joel, and the rest of your team, and the rest of our corporate team for, you know, making this such an amazing part of allowing people to make an amazing part of their life. And it’s just been a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to seeing the winners here in just nine short weeks.

>> Joel: It’s going to be exciting. This is the best time of the year for us. It’s like Christmas.

>> Kjersti: Yea, no kidding. Alright, and one last thing is can you just give everybody that website one more time, because I know there’s people listening in on the line that are coaching individuals who are experiencing the challenge, so website again for all of the details including the essay?

>> Joel: Isabodychallenge.com. Isabodycahllenge.com.

>> Kjersti: Great. Well, thank you so much, Joel, for being with us tonight. We appreciate you, and, again, Dr. Harper, thank you for being with us as well. It’s been an absolute pleasure. And for everybody that’s been listening in on the line, it’s always a pleasure having you on. And one other thing too, this call has been recorded. It will be posted in your back office for you to reference 24 hours a day, seven days a week. As people are finishing out here, send it to your teams.

And another thing too is go to isagenixpodcast.com. That’s another place where you can listen to this call. Click right on the link, and then also the transcripts to this call will be available in about five to seven days for you to take advantage of and read it. So we just, again, congratulations for everybody making it this far. Have a wonderful time this last weekend of your challenge, and much luck to everybody, and we’ll meet everybody on our Saturday morning business training with Rick Despain on Saturday at nine a.m. Pacific. Alright, thanks again everybody. Bye-bye.

Note:

This program is for educational purposes only. The opinions expressed by the participants are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Isagenix International. These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. Isagenix products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Weight loss results may vary. Always consult your physician or health care professional before starting this or any other illness or fitness program. Income examples reflect the results achieved by Isagenix associates across a wide spectrum. These are examples and not necessarily typical or average, nor do they represent a guarantee of your personal results. As with any business opportunity, success depends largely on the individual associate skills, motivation, and effort. For average financial performance data see the independent associate earning statement at isagenixearnings.com.

 

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