I posted recently about the beginning of our week long vacation to California for the Shaklee New Director’s conference. The first part, Days 1-3 was about our road trip to Wisconsin from Mississippi where we dropped our kids at my parents house. You can read about that HERE if you missed it.
I am breaking our trip down into smaller posts since there was SO much that we did and saw that I want to share! Today I’m sharing about our fantastic start to our California adventure with our home stay at Dr. Daggy and his wife Anne’s beautiful home. Dr. Daggy is a very important person at Shaklee as he is the Senior VP, Research & Development & Chief Science Officer! Like, big time very important person in Shaklee, but also such a very nice guy! He caught wind of what David does as a professor, chemist, and researcher in natural products and wanted to meet with him. So Dr. Daggy invited us out a day early and opened his home for us to stay with them. It.Was.Awesome!!!! Here are some highlights from that portion of our trip and I thought to jump ahead to share a bit on the Shaklee science.
We flew out of Milwaukee on Tuesday morning….it was an exciting day as we were heading off to San Francisco to visit Shaklee headquarters for the very first time! This was a trip that we earned as new Directors in Shaklee!
We flew Southwest and they took good care of us.
Since we came in a day early, we were on our own to transport from the airport to Pleasanton. Had we come in on time, Shaklee would have picked us up, but instead we took the local subway. BART! It was actually kind of fun doing this! Dr. Daggy picked us up at the Pleasanton station and we were on our way to an awesome time!
Dr. and Mrs. Daggy were nothing but hospitable to us. They fed us well and showed us around Pleasanton and Dr. Daggy and David got to talk science a bit. We drove past Shaklee Headquarters and the brand new awesome research and development center! We also had a pleasant walk through downtown Pleasanton, which was originally a gold mining town during the gold rush! It is an adorable, clean little town. And the downtown area is terrific. This is us in front of the sign I have seen so often in other’s pictures. Dr. Daggy took this picture for us. 🙂
This is the historic Pleasanton hotel. Also the hotel that the Daggy’s stayed in while he interviewed at Shaklee. Apparently Pleasanton is said to be haunted. I found this blog on the topic interesting and entertaining.
There’s a working historic gas station in Pleasanton too. I was taking a picture of gas prices (about a $1 higher then in MS!) but also caught Dr. and Mrs Daggy walking through the streets of wonderful Pleasanton with my husband David. It was a beautiful night!
We had a very nice dinner at the Daggy’s home. Anne really loves to cook and she sure is good at it! I realized I didn’t take pictures of the delicious veggie kabobs they grilled for us but I didn’t forget to take a picture of the sparkling wine and delicious dessert (topped with fresh raspberries from their wonderful garden! – YUM!) Anne also made us an awesome curry the next day for lunch that came with a beer to tone down the heat! lol. No pictures of that, but I DID take lots of pictures of our morning smoothee that she made us! that deserves a post of it’s own so stay tuned. 🙂
Dr. Daggy is a wonderful musician! I learned this over a year ago at a meeting I went to in chicago where he entertained us playing and singing his version of the “Shaklee Blues”. Our first evening in Pleasanton ended with him showing us some of his awesome guitar collection (he has a Guild like I do too! Mine is for sale so let me know if you’re looking for a beautiful instrument that deserves a good home where it’s played.) and he played a bit for us too. Next time I will bring my flute. 🙂 ….here is a picture of Dr. Daggy playing his ukulele. He’s really talented!
You may know that California is in a severe drought. Shaklee has gotten recognition from the town of Pleasanton for their efforts in conserving water. They are doing a great job with this. And Dr. Daggy and his wife are also doing their part. They have rain barrels and also gave us a bucket to catch the cold water as we started our shower in the morning. I was surprised at how I filled half the bucket up in less then the minute or so it took for the water to warm up! It made me realize how wasteful we are in our home and we were excited when Mrs. Daggy gave us a rain barrel spout and tubing that they are not using so we can make our own in Mississippi!
Having said that, it RAINED the first full day we were there! (we take full credit. lol) Not a hard rain. But a nice, consistent rain that started in the middle of the night and went till about 3pm the next day. Just in time for our conference to start. I didn’t mind at all. Those of you who know me, know that I truly LOVE a good rain. (thunder and lightening is an added bonus). I took a walk in it that morning and it was so peaceful. This is the money view of the rain and mountains from the Daggy’s front yard. It was beautiful to see the steam coming off the mountains.
On my walk I saw a snail out enjoying the rain. I thought it was unique and cool so I took a picture. And then I realized he was not alone. There were dozens of snails out while I walked. I had to be careful not to step on them!
I saw this tree on my walk and found it so unusual! California is beautiful!
The Daggy’s have a beautiful yard filled with LIFE! Lots of fruit and veggies as well as beautiful flowers.
Before the conference started, Dr. Daggy drove us by the brand new, state of the art Research and Development center. He explained how Shaklee is unique in having a lab like this. Most companies do not. Or they out source their testing and science. Shaklee’s standards truly are much higher then most if not all. We test every product before, during and after production. And for new products there are two more points of testing in there too. There has been many times when Shaklee scientists catch things in the material or products from manufactures that the manufacturer was unaware of. (like recently when they realized a raw material had radioactivity! Something that doesn’t meet our standards and when they pointed it out to the manufacturer they were not aware and thanked shaklee for drawing it to their attention) Shaklee goes above and beyond what’s required and I love that part of our company! That I can freely share our great products knowing that they truly are always safe from all of the testing and always work from the science that is there to back it up!
This is in the lobby of the research and development center. 100 year timeline of Shaklee science and innovation! No other company can say this! Awesome!! And this bust of Dr. Shaklee is also in the lobby. Looking back at my parent’s new directors trip 2 years ago, I realize this was moved from the headquarters as my mom had a picture with it there too!
This is one of my favorite pictures from the New Directors Conference. Right after we got off the bus on the first day and walked the red carpet as the corporate folks including Roger Barnett were there cheering for us (more later on that! ) we came into the meeting room that was built for the Shaklee field. I went to find a place to sit (right up front – same table CEO Roger Barnett sat at that day!!!!) and I turned around and could not find my husband anywhere! And then I saw him here. Barbara Lagoni who is a master coordinator in Shaklee and also a nutritionist has taken a liking to David because of his science background and research with natural products. She whisked him away to meet one of the head scientists, Francis Lau. Here is David talking with Francis, Barbara and Dr. Daggy.
I am going to jump ahead a bit to share what Dr. Daggy, Barbara Lagoni and the science panel, which included Dr. Jaime McManus, MD, who is the chair of medical affairs and health and science education, shared with us. I took some pictures of the slides so you can see more detail on what they talked about with Shaklee science and how we are different from other companies in this area. Shaklee has over 100 published papers, most are in peer-reviewed journals. My husband knows first hand how hard that can be!
One of the really cool things they shared was how just the day before, Shaklee received another patent on our awesome Vivix product! This is our anti-aging tonic that builds health at the cellular level, made from the muscadine grape. It’s delicious and I love the energy I get from it! 🙂
I hope this post was enjoyable but also informative to you! To learn more about Shaklee science, and the incredibly high standards Shaklee has. If something does not meet our standards, Shaklee will hold it until it does. The safety and effectiveness of the product is the most important thing. The bottom line with money and profit is second to the safety for you and your family and also for the environment! This was great for my scientist husband to hear and see while we were there. I enjoyed it too!
Thanks for reading! Stay tuned for day 6 of our trip – our meeting with CEO Roger Barnett and a recognition dinner at a fabulous vineyard!
Rebecca
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