Founded | 1958
Headquarters | Santa Clara, CA
Top Executive | Kendra Brassfield, CEO
Product Category | Health and Wellness
As NeoLife prepares to celebrate its 65th year in business, CEO Kendra Brassfield honors the beautiful legacy of her family’s business but has fixed her eyes on the promise of what the next decade holds. While so much of her father’s work and dedication is built into the foundation of NeoLife, what comes next is up to her.
A New Chapter
The NeoLife story turned a historical page when Kendra Brassfield stepped into the role of CEO in 2016, succeeding her father, Jerry Brassfield, who founded the company in 1958. Kendra’s long path to CEO had been filled with mentorship and training from her father but—most importantly—was paved with the lessons learned from building her own NeoLife business from scratch. As CEO, Kendra has worked to make her own mark on NeoLife, successfully navigating the global pandemic; infusing her team with new talent; and dreaming up a strategy to launch NeoLife into its next decade. While elements of NeoLife are evolving under her leadership, she’s equally proud of what has stayed the same.
“Our foundational core values are really what make us who we are,” Kendra shared. “Things like integrity, people being number one, equal opportunity for all, products that work and long-range vision. That vision is evident in the fact that we’ve been here since 1958 and are still going strong.”
NeoLife’s catalog of products ranges from the nutrition products the company has been known for over the years to earth-friendly home care and organic skin care items as well. Since the mid-1970s, NeoLife’s Scientific Advisory Board has led the company’s research and development efforts, introducing new products once they’ve been tested to meet NeoLife’s standards.
“We have some of the world’s most impressive doctors and researchers creating and formulating our products,” Kendra said. “They actually control which products that we launch or don’t launch. We don’t let marketing or sales determine our products’ futures. It is purely based on science. We do a lot of our own clinical studies and clinical research to make sure that they truly work, and we see it in the results that people get as well. That’s been so core to our foundation of who we are as a company, because of my dad’s story. The reason he’s so passionate about nutrition is that he grew up with terrible asthma allergies, and he saw the power firsthand of the difference that good nutrition can make. I also have the same struggles that he had with asthma and allergies. We want the best because we want to take the best, and we know others do as well.”
NeoLife’s latest breakthrough product, UpBeet launched in July 2022. This nitric oxide supplement supports heart health, increases stamina and endurance and improves circulation.
“Nitric oxide is being called the ‘miracle molecule,’ because of how important it is for health,” Kendra explained. “It’s one of those elements that just makes you feel like you did when you were younger. You have so much energy—natural energy—because you have a lot of nitric oxide flowing through your blood. This product has jumped right out the gate to become one of our top selling products.”
UpBeet, along with NeoLife’s extensive range of products, are shared by over a million promoters in 50 countries and counting.
A Transformative Community
This global community of promoters is what Kendra considers NeoLife’s secret sauce and hugely transformative to her own NeoLife path.
“We have a community that really truly ignites personal growth,” she said. “When someone is a part of it, we don’t recognize ourselves in one year, two years, three years, 10 years down the road because of the positive change that happens. I’m completely speaking about this from experience. I know when I came into the business I was as shy as you can be, couldn’t hardly order coffee from Starbucks without turning red in the face. Having leaders who want to throw water over your fears and gasoline over the fires of your dreams, is so impactful.”
To ensure that her corporate team experienced as much growth and empowerment as her field, Kendra worked to find ways of connecting both sides of the business.
“We’ve really made a big push over the last decade to help everybody understand that it doesn’t matter if you are the janitor or an accountant or the field development person in the trenches—the work that you do is truly making an impact on our business partners, members and customers,” she said. “Bringing in that purpose-driven element has transformed our culture and has really increased people’s satisfaction in what they do. Sometimes you come work for a company, and think ‘oh sure, everybody says they have the best products.’ But then it’s completely different when you hear from the people that you’re sitting next to in the office say, ‘oh my goodness, you should have seen me before I came into NeoLife. I’ve used these products now for the past 5, 10 years, and look at the difference it’s made.’”
A New Goal
Several key new team members are just getting acquainted with NeoLife’s impactful culture, as Kendra has recently hired a Vice President of Digital and a Vice President of Information Systems as part of a major investment in the company’s digital offering. Her team is leveraging artificial intelligence in a way that she believes the direct selling space has never seen.
“It’s going to be AI powered across all of our websites, virtual office as well as apps,” she explained. “The system will look at trends in consumer behavior as well as behavior of the people in a promoter’s downline and be able to predict and spot key insights that will help our field take better care of their customers and downlines. This will also be able to make shopping simpler for customers because the technology will know what they are looking for, remember what they’re looking for and make the shopping experience and user experience delightful and seamless.”
Beyond these latest technology hires, Kendra has brought additional team members into the NeoLife family, including a new Vice President of Field Development as well as Director of Field Development in North America, to support her growing field. New hires, new products on the horizon for 2023, a supportive culture and this latest AI initiative are all elements of NeoLife’s latest goal: Top 10 in 10.
“We want to be one of the top direct selling companies in the world in the next 10 years,” she shared. “I think more than anything else, it’s not just about being in the top 10 for bragging rights, but I think our business is truly a measuring stick for the impact that we make in people’s lives. And as we grow, that means our impact is exponentially growing.”
As Kendra and her team pursue this latest goal, they’re ultimately pursuing NeoLife’s broader goal of making the world a healthier and happier place, ending the trend of poor health and financial stress—the same goal her father had when he launched NeoLife so many years ago and worked to achieve through effective products and an incredible culture.
“When people ask about our culture, it’s not just fancy words on a page or inspirational quotes,” Kendra explained. “It’s a living concept, something that we internalize, and it guides every action that we make. And all that is towards fulfilling our mission of giving everyone the power to live healthier and happier lives.”
From the March 2023 issue of Direct Selling News magazine.
