Medically, he’s making no claims, promises, statements, predictions or forecasts. John Hewlett is up-front about that. He’s not a doctor and doesn’t pretend to be one.
Nor is he what you’d call a walking advertisement for heart health.
“I’m 74 years old, 50 pounds overweight and I like to eat,” he openly confesses as he pats his waistline.
And yet, as he is quick to point out, it’s precisely because he looks like he does that his story becomes all the more credible.
He should have died 17 years ago. He starts with that.
It was the time in his life when everything that could go wrong, did — and then things got worse.
The downfall began, like most downfalls, without much of a warning. For 35 years, John had been a picture of success. He had forged a career as one of the top life insurance salesmen in the country. He drove fast cars. He had a big house with a swimming pool. He was a regular presence at Utah Jazz games with front-row seats, which he filled with clients and celebrities he wanted to impress.
But then he bought the licensing rights to a golf company owned by the Italian sportswear company FILA. The golf line was failing and Hewlett thought he could resurrect it with American-style marketing. And that might have been the case if FILA hadn’t insisted he deal only with high-end retailers, instead of selling to Costco and on the internet.
In a surprisingly short period of time, all the money ran out and John, in an attempt to pay back his investors, found himself liquidating everything, including his house.
“I suffered the first major setback of my life,” he says. “I was depressed. My whole world fell apart. I had to start again from zero.”
And then, his heart started talking back to him.
This was not surprising. The Hewletts had a history of heart problems. John’s dad died of heart failure at 62, his grandfather at 66, his uncle at 57. Adding to the genetic disposition was the enormous stress that goes with a complete financial collapse.
In 2007, when he turned 57, a tightening in his chest sent him to the hospital, where doctors discovered an infected appendix and performed an emergency appendectomy. When he returned home, John fainted. The doctors had nicked a vein. He lost five pints of blood before he made it back to the hospital.
It was while they were patching him up again that he was informed his arteries were blocked and he needed to have quadruple bypass surgery.
Wary of spending any more time in the hospital, he declined the operation.
It was at this point that a friend, who worked for a multilevel-marketing supplement company called Nature’s Sunshine, suggested that John consider taking supplements designed to help stimulate the body’s production of nitric oxide.
Nitric oxide, the friend explained, is a natural essential gas that widens blood vessels, thereby improving the flow of nutrients and oxygen and lowering blood pressure. As people age, the body tends to produce less and less nitric oxide.
John began taking the Nature’s Sunshine supplements … and started to feel better.
“My blood pressure and cholesterol went back to normal, my chest pains went away, I started breathing better,” he says, “I thought, ‘What is this stuff?’”
It should come as no surprise that after learning what the stuff was, John, ever the salesman, joined the Nature’s Sunshine family and started his own downline. It wasn’t long before he was one of the company’s top producers.
More surprising is that he walked away from his secure spot in the MLM world and started his own nitric oxide supplement company. It’s called Cardio Miracle, and instead of being available only in a closed MLM network, it sells directly to the public.
“I’m a zealot. I’ve always been a zealot,” says John in explaining the move. “And I thought this is something that more people need to know about and needs to be more available, because the science behind this is real and I’m convinced it could save millions of lives. I thought that was more important than ensuring 100 rich people (in the MLM business) make more millions.”
In a way, he’s back to selling life insurance.
He runs the family business with his sons Jason and Josh. They have a warehouse in the Salt Lake Valley and sell their product online. John’s in charge of sales. He never tires of poking fun at how he looks, or using it to make his pitch.
“I know, I get it,” he says. “People look at me and go, ‘Why would I listen to an overweight old guy telling me about my health?’”
Then he answers his own question. “Because I’m still alive, because I haven’t been on medication for 17 years, because I have all this energy and I feel good — and because it feels great to be able to say that to others.”