Harness Natural Products For Enhanced Health & Sleep

Nancy Bogart

Thank you so much for having me say. It’s an honor.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Nancy, you’ve been doing this for 23 years, as I read. You started your company 23 years ago, and you’ve built your company into a multimillion-dollar business. You’re very successful at what you do. Can you tell me a little bit about how the journey started, why you even got interested in this in the first place, and what it’s been like? What’s the trajectory?

Nancy Bogart

I began as a young mom. I had three little boys at home, and I was probably about to go back to work. I just didn’t want to let go of the family values that I needed to have that balance. My background was in food science, catering, and recipe creation, and I thought surely I could do something with non-perishables. So I started making products, and I invented a solid bar of lotion. Little did I know that that little bar of lotion was made with natural waxes and oils, and people started loving it. We’ve poured over 5 million bars here and mixed them, and that would be the beginning of this movement for other families and people. Then the knowledge that I started to gain began to snowball. It’s like it was; I just don’t like to say it because it doesn’t smell very good. I’m in the fragrance business, but it was like this flower that just kept blooming. But you go deeper into it, and you start to learn so many things. I started to study, just like I did food science, about the ingredients we were putting into our bodies. It became very clear to us about five years into the 23 that I wanted to start to change things from smelling good to making a difference. That’s when things changed. So, yes, we started very much in my kitchen, mixing things up for our factory today.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

I’m curious: even before we talk about the products that are part of the Jordan Essentials line, what did you discover about what was already out there? What did you learn about the ingredients and how things were being promoted from a consumer health perspective?

Nancy Bogart

Well, I remember in school doing a lot about organic chemistry and biology and all the things you learn. When I was putting them to use with my skincare products when I started to do industrial, I started to learn so much about the chemicals they were putting into our products and that women could put on over 100 chemicals in a day just putting on our hair, doing our makeup, skincare, moisturizing, and then we’re responsible for our families. Then it became so much more than just selling some soaps, lotions, bars, and some cute things. I began to learn about parabens, and that was such an eye-opener, that was the first chemical I learned about as a preservative. People were using parabens, which mimic estrogen that we’re building up inside our bodies. then moving into aluminum in our deodorants. It was like reading a bad novel. It was like one shocker after another. I said, “What can I do to make a difference?” I am talking to everyday moms about the business model I chose, and I feel like I could make an impact in our community today. Then I became quite passionate about it. That’s why we’re so successful: it resonates with everyday people.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Oh, yes, I’m sure you’re quite familiar with this term, which is generally recognized as safe. The problem is that this is all word-of-mouth learning. But what I’ve been told is that a designation has some loose regulatory structure around it; first of all, it is not in the hands of the government to determine whether something is recognized as safe, but by the producer of that product. Then further complicating that picture is that, as you said, I’ve heard very similar statistics about how many different chemicals men and women put on their bodies daily, from getting in the shower and using shampoos with 25–30 different compounds to perfumes, makeup, underarm deodorant, and so forth. But no one knows what the combinations of these products even do. so very important. You brought up the issue of the estrogen or the parabens having an estrogen-like effect. We’ve seen changes in our ecosystem not only with, say, men with low testosterone, or there’s nothing to do necessarily with personal care products, but there is the famous ecological disaster of the feminization of the frogs as a result of the pesticide. These are very big realities. We see this in the clinic, for example, where, with Parkinson’s disease, it’s well recognized that heralding the onset of Parkinson’s disease, there’s an abrupt drop in testosterone in many cases. We do have to think about the impact of these compounds on sex hormones, among other things. But I’m curious. It started with soap. What has it morphed into? What does Jordan Essentials look like today?

Nancy Bogart

That’s where it got interesting because it’s my passion. We decided to use the best, purest, and most amazing ingredients. I love essential oils, and not everybody does because they’re, like, over-commercialized, over-marketed. But God put them on Earth for a reason. They’re doing them and might not have certification. The compounds are so beautiful. We can get pesticide-free essential oils to blend into our products and have a purposeful application because we want to make something affordable. Remember, I want to help people be able to use these every day. My mission was to help people infuse healthy ingredients. But there was a day that came when we started looking into magnesium, and that was a game changer for us. So our magnesium lotion, some of which is infused with some essential oils and some is just unscented, is something a lot of people like. This was a big connection to Parkinson’s because we have so many family members on staff because of the muscles and work so well with the muscles. Now we’re not just using essential oils and botanicals; we’re using a mineral like magnesium in our lotion. We can come back to that. But we also make a natural, recyclable glass container for our cleaners and for our household cleaners that is reusable and uses essential oils and organic alcohol.

It’s going to kill everything. It’s great. It’s super affordable. So it’s taking that chemical load out of people’s homes to just their hand soap that they use at the sink. My husband, who I work with, sometimes says, “You have so many SKUs; there’s so many items.” I’m like, I know, but people need to come to us. I used to say, Where is the trusted name and family? If they’re going to trust me, and I have four kids, how are we going to use it, feel good about it, and provide something for families? It’s morphed into this whole thing about how we support families with the products they’re putting on their skin and then educate them. It’s not complicated. It’s super easy. We blend things for them. We keep it affordable, and it’s something that you’re going to be like, Oh, I’ve got a burn. Oh, mom, grab the skin relief. My kids would always say, I need some skin. They never say they need anything from the drugstore. It’s got green tea, aloe, and camel seaweed in this shea butter base. You put that on a sunburn; you put it on a burn. It becomes the solution. We just want to have a solution. I changed from bubbles, bunnies, baths, and bodies to skincare solutions that families can use and trust that would help support healthy lifestyles.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

You said something that piqued my interest, which is that you have been able to get pesticide-free essential oils. It never occurred to me that that would even be a consideration. But there’s such a strong relationship between pesticide exposure and the risk of Parkinson’s. Maybe you don’t know, but how common is it that products that we could be putting on or in our bodies or our homes may contain trace pesticides?

Nancy Bogart

Yes, because, like earlier said, it may not connect, but it does because a lot of our products are plant-based. Think about using an orange as an essential oil. It came from a tree, probably from Italy or California. It depends on where it came from. Is the tree as it was grown, and how do they use either natural insects or pesticides? The more commercialized it is, the more overfarmed it is. You get your oil, and they’re trying to make as much as they can, as quickly as they can. But you can do that with natural pesticides. We’ve always been pesticide-free. We do see certificates of authenticity on our products and our oils. All of our oils are non-GMO. I feel like I can just take that on for our customers. They don’t know or don’t care. I know I care that we find our raw materials and products. My son, who’s 27, is now our plant manager, and he’s taken that on, and we have our standard. We call it the Gold Nancy Standard Seal of Ingredients and our no-no list. what we will allow but won’t allow. During the pandemic, it was interesting. After all, we didn’t have a supply chain problem because we’ve built such great relationships over 23 years, especially the last ten years. Our suppliers were loyal to us because we’ve been loyal to them. We just saw a lot of growth because we took our business online, where mostly we’ve been in homes and word of mouth, but the last three years going on—four years—has been explosive. But it’s what makes me feel very good. I don’t know how other companies do it; they put some of these things out, but I feel our products are superb.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Do products get tested for pesticide levels? Are there any independent third-party testing agents here?

Nancy Bogart

There are.  You want to look for ingredients that come from sources. I let the source do my testing with a third party. I bring in the information with it, and then we blend it. Once we get it in the house, we stabilize it and then do different things for our final batches.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

In the big picture, Jordan Essentials has some different major product lines. We’ve talked about cleaning products for your home. Then there are personal care products, and then there are supplements. What is the general framework?

Nancy Bogart

I’ll use a little visual. We have our stick sprays and rollers, which we call solutions. These are your sleep solutions, which are so important for everybody. We could probably do another half an hour just for sleep. We blend our essential oils into a witch hazel base, grapeseed oil, or beeswax base for application. All of our solutions go into one category, and they also go with our magnesium lotion as a solution. Those all go into one category, and then we have our bath and body products like you would think, like soaps, deodorants, and lotions, that people are going to pick up anyway at the store. But we want them to pick up ours as we go. Then we have the cleaning. But then we also go into skincare, and I left them out there with the team up front. We do a calm bar, which is a night cream with ylang-ylang.

It’s going to balance hormones as you sleep. We have a charcoal mask because, for women, that’s where they’re getting a lot of chemicals in their faces. Between the sticks, sprays, and solutions, the bath and body, and the face care, then I have a makeup line, too, because I didn’t want to carry makeup, but man, that’s where the sneakers come in. We have a shea butter lipstick. We have clean, pure mineral-based powder, mineral-based makeup, and a BB foundation that has magnesium and helichrysum in it. We’re going to do anti-aging without chemicals; we’re going to do it naturally. We’re going to bring those in. Women still feel as beautiful as they want to, from a tint up to a heavier foundation. You don’t have to give things up to be the best, most healthy version of yourself. So that’s my philosophy because I didn’t want to give it all up either. But I wanted to be sure that everything we were putting onto our skin that we know goes into her bloodstream within about 26 seconds to be good and healthy. That’s how we do it: with stick spray solutions, bath and body care, and face care, which is just so fun. then the makeup.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

That’s such a good point about the skin. It’s said that the skin is the largest organ in the body. We do absorb chemicals. Some drugs are prescribed for transdermal estrogen, for example. So we do absorb drugs and hormones through the skin. There are some specific Parkinson’s drugs; rotigotine, or the new Pro Patch, is an example. Just to emphasize, if you get something on your skin, it’s going to find its way into your body. It turns out they’re statistically about one and a half of what the ratio of women to men is. In Parkinson’s, the male predominance is about a one-to-1.5 ratio of women to men. But men should not say, “Well, I don’t put on a lot of it; it’s not a thing of mine personally.” I don’t think of myself as putting on makeup, but in reality, I do. and I want to walk through as a guy. 

I know Nancy’s husband, and he’s a guy. We guys do use personal care products. When I get in my shower, I’m going to use shampoo and conditioner. Is it natural? Is it something that doesn’t contain pesticides, estrogen mimics, or things like that? I’m going to put underarm deodorant on. I might spray myself with a little bit of cologne. One of the things that I discovered several years ago is that I use a lot of things, like mousse or other hair care products, but my hair could go frizzy and stand up on what little I have left. I was traveling with my wife one time, and I said, “Oh my gosh, I left this balm or whatever at home. I don’t have anything.” She said, “Well, try this.” It was just a little bottle of essential oil, the tea tree oil; it was meant for around the eye as a dot on my palm like this, and I could put it on my hair and comb my hair, and it returned some moisture to my hair. The point is that I do put a lot of products on my body. Just wondering, are you well? It sounds like you’re doing well. There might be more women who find their way to Jordan Essentials. There’s a role for men as well.

Nancy Bogart

When we purchase our products for our families, women are the major purchasers. As an example, I have three sons. We do a beard balm because we do put some tea trees in there. After all, they’ll harbor bacteria in their beards. They’re washing their beards with these shampoos and chemicals. The beard balm helps with that. My favorite product for men is probably Dead Sea salt. My husband did run 50 miles for his 50th birthday. Crazy, but because men have larger muscle tissues and they do work out, their muscle fibers are different. So they’re going to be more likely to grab it. “Oh, I want to put some of that frizzy stuff for an ache or a pain in it. So soaking in Dead Sea salt. We don’t call it a bubble bath or anything in our house, but having a Dead Sea salt, this is from the Dead Sea. We want to have a solution for them. Men love our lotion. Their fingers tend to crack in the winter. We used to have these guys because my husband’s in the trades. They would use super glue to glue their fingers together. not only for comfort but also because they’re much more likely to walk through the checkout stand and grab something—not tell anybody but the deodorant that they’re putting on. We have a good, natural, essential deodorant spray. 

Men tend to be hairier. They don’t want to use as much lotion. But if they’re too, especially if people have Parkinson’s and are having a soak or lotion and all the muscles think that it’s all about the muscle and the relaxation from tension, migraines or headaches, or just everyday life, men tend to be a lot more physical, too, inside of a day. What are they using to solve those problems? Are they popping ibuprofen instead of a personal care product? They may not be thinking of that solution. My guys have grown up that way, so they might come into my office because my sons work with me, and they’re like, “Hey, I’ve got a bad headache. Do you have those headache sticks?” Then they’ll use the headache stick as a solution instead of popping all the ibuprofen and going through their gut.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Well, now, if I want to access Jordan’s Essential products, how do I do that?

Nancy Bogart

Well, you will have your link. We’ll have a bottle because we do. It’s so funny how I chose how to do this. I had a big buyer’s box store. I’ve had franchises, and I’ve had people trying to buy our company for years. Now. My children work with me, and we have a beautiful factory. We employ a lot of people. We have a nice family, and my daughter’s special needs: We employ a lot of people with special needs. I just can’t imagine selling out a family there. We didn’t want to put it in a store. We only sell through independent distributors. So people decide, I love this product and am so going to have a special thing for you. so it’ll come back into the clinic and help support the services here. That’s how we’re going to put that together. Kylee’s got that for us. So I wanted to support people who were like me and were on the same mission, and we just linked arms and partnered with people. So there are lots of opportunities for that and a lot of information on our website at jordanessentials.com.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

That’s great. Now we talked a lot about what we might be putting in or on our bodies. You also have some products for the home itself.

Nancy Bogart

I do, and so do we for our pets, because I don’t think people realize that your pet is there in your bed; they’re around your home. I switched over to our natural pet products, we had pets in the early days, and they would pass away awfully young. So changing your pet care helps as well. But our home products, we do have a because I’m big about the environment too. It’s just that I’m just bent that way and recycling, so you get a glass and then you get just our refills, which are essential concentrates. I’m big on finding a solution. You don’t have to do all this. You just squeeze it in here, add the water, and you’re done. 80% of our products are less than $30. That’s important when people talk about high-quality products. But we’re also based in Nixa, Missouri, and we just pass that on to everyone. But you can also use the products for diffusers, like our lavender and orange oils. You can mix them and make your cleaning paste from our resistance. There are so many different ways to use them around your home to lessen the burden on your body. We have our natural deodorant, which I brought in here. “Oh, I did.” It’s called Spritzer Bit, but it’s a natural deodorant that you can also use to deodorize your pet containers, stinky feet, and tennis shoes all around the house. We have a sheet on 30 ways to use resistance, and you can spritz your pet or have that available, so I’m big on like there are ten ways to use this and 20 ways because if you’re going to buy something, let’s make it work. I don’t want it to sit in a drawer somewhere. so we use it all over the house.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Wow, that’s terrific. If I needed some guidance to navigate all the different products you have, what would I turn to? What are the resources for that? You’ve mentioned blogs.

Nancy Bogart

Yes, we do. We have a great post. I just blogged earlier this morning about lavender oil. We have a Facebook page that has a community class, and we’ll do between one and four a month, and you can go back in there. I did one on our face care and how to age naturally. We have one that we did on our home health care, and we have another that I’m not certified to do, or I’m a therapist on staff. We took essential classes. We also have a Contact Us page on our website and a fantastic team. They’ve been with me for years. We have a lot of resources, and we have people asking us questions all day long. We love it and are happy to help people find solutions that meet their everyday needs. Facebook is a good place, and Jordan Essentials is the main page right there. You can even hit just message and say, Hey, I saw Nancy and had a question, and I get all of those. I read all of those. I don’t sleep. I love to work. It’s been a joy in my life for 23 years. I’m looking forward to many more.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

You can follow Jordan Essentials on Facebook, and then I’m sure you get notified when things come up or when good opportunities are there.

Nancy Bogart

Yes, I love a deal. You get a dollar-three stick. We do monthly specials all the time. You can sign up for our newsletter at our website, at the pop-up, and then we’ll link it right back in here to the Sharlin Clinic for you as well.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Well, that’s wonderful. You are located in Nixa, Missouri, but you have reached the world. if we will have people in the Parkinson’s Solutions Summit who are watching from Great Britain, or maybe they happen to be somewhere in South America or something like that. Do you ship all around the world?

Nancy Bogart

Not yet. I’m not licensed to. We made some gifts. I give to quite a few people in Australia and different countries the day that we’re ready to go in. We’d like to have some samples. I’d be happy to send those, but I’m not ready to branch outside the United States. But yes, we ship all across the United States and all U.S. territories: Guam, Puerto Rico, Saint Thomas, Alaska, and Hawaii. We do ship all over the United States out of our little haven here in Nixa, Missouri.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Are we going to Canada or Mexico? Just curious.

Nancy Bogart

Yes, it’s in our five-year plan. We’ll see how it goes. Definitely in Canada; they’re knocking on our door, and a lot of my northern state independent consultants have family, and they’re like, When are we going to sell? We’ve got a lot of that going on. We’ll have to see when that’s going to happen.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Well, folks, it’s been a real pleasure to learn about Jordan Essentials with CEO and founder Nancy Bogart. I encourage you to check out their website at jordanessentials.com. Go to the Facebook page and follow them. I don’t know if you’re on formerly Twitter, now known as X, but all the other platforms that are out there and social media, YouTube. But this is a great line of products for your home, for your family, and yourself. We need to think cleanly when it comes to Parkinson’s disease. I thought this was just a wonderful opportunity to learn more about how that can be accomplished.

Nancy Bogart

Thank you so much. I enjoyed being here today.

Kenneth Sharlin, MD

Thank you. Nancy Bogart. We look forward to visiting with you again soon.