Jurlique founder tells story of pioneering work

Dec. 6, 2011 - PRLog -- A pioneer of the natural beauty products industry shares the secrets of his decades of research and work in a new book about his life, at a time when he is continuing to break new ground in the industry.
Alchemist, naturopath, inventor and innovator Dr Jurgen Klein, founder of the Jurlique organic beauty products company, has released his autobiography, Unearthing Nature’s Secrets – an intriguing insight into a life seemingly full of paradoxes: a man inspired by nature and industrialisation, who goes from poverty to worldwide success.
Dr Klein turned his back on a chance to become the “Bill Gates of the wellness ndustry”, selling his company in what he calls the “sale of the century” to Australian billionaires Kerry and James Packer, and choosing instead to continue on a personal search for knowledge and how to use it to help others.
He says he hopes the book, in which he criticises those he says are responsible for our “sickness” industry and our polluted world – from pharmaceutical companies and political lobbies to Al Gore and modern medicine – will help readers strive beyond popular notions of success and toward inner values.
“I will not make the illusory and narcissistic suggestion that I might be a great role model; I simply hope my words impart a coin of wisdom and prosperity to my readers,” he says.
The book is more than a journey from rags to riches as Dr Klein’s thirst for knowledge takes him around the globe, meeting many of our time’s most forward-thinking minds.
Inspired by a will to break the poverty cycle, Dr Klein turned his Australian-based beauty products company into a global success story at the forefront of what was then a burgeoning wellness industry.
After selling Jurlique, he found enlightenment in a near-death experience high in the mountains of Tibet, and continued his journey with a decade-long project to invent a device he says will revolutionise the spa and wellness industry.
He offers hope for the future and in humanity to work with nature, coming to a renewed belief that health is the new wealth.
Dr Klein became a “reluctant hero of the natural health industry”, lecturing around the world, receiving offers from book publishers (one wanted him to write a book titled How to Become a Millionaire in the Trillion-dollar Wellness Industry), and being quoted in the media about the latest health food, cosmetic and wellbeing crazes.
“I easily could have become a kind of Bill Gates of wellness,” he says. “I found myself being sucked into a celebrity lifestyle that went against my true nature.”
After more than 20 years as Jurlique’s leader, it was time to let go. The company was valued at $146million during negotiations for the sale to Kerry and James Packer.
Klein stayed on temporarily as CEO of Jurlique but soon cut all ties, at the same time his marriage of 32 years ended.
“I was left with a feeling of emptiness and disappointment that needed to be filled with a new cycle of activity and creativity,” he said.
He left Australia in 2004, looking for a new direction. “I felt a sense of responsibility mixed with shame for being part of an industry that had masked its shortfalls to conform to standards of the profit-oriented business world,” he says.
He says many day and resort spas now cater to the rich, with expensive design and mediocre service.
“What was once a genuine motivation to offer caring treatments to stressed and sick people seems to have become just another new way to get loads of fast cash,” he says.
“Without a radical generational change, wellness would become a pop group without an audience, existing as a wind-up clock in the digital age.”
A pilgrimage to Mt Kailash, Tibet, at the time of his 60th birthday ended in a near-death experience which became a moment of enlightenment, leading him to a new stage in his quest to help people through natural medicine. He developed what he says is “the next new spa sensation” – the JK7-Spa Sensator – for an industry that was becoming boring. He describes the JK7-Spa Sensator as a fun and entertaining anti-gravity device based on “sense pods” using the five primary senses, and a sixth and seventh sense. It treats, helps overcome and transforms stress, depression and psychosomatic imbalance into positive energy.He says it builds on traditional alternative and complementary treatments.
“I see this innovation as a first step and an important contribution to the next era of health which may lead to a new understanding of the meaning of the word ‘longevity’,” he says.
Klein has pledged to give all his profits from sales of the device to charity projects in Third World countries.
He says we have not seen the end of the impact of the global financial crisis, and that the wellness industry will be the “next big thing” after the IT and biotech revolutions go through their down cycles.
He criticises the “huge sickness industry that isn’t interested in the pursuit of health and wellness”, citing government-controlled “health” systems, political majorities and lobbies, the “profit lust and avarice” of the global medical and pharmaceutical systems, inadequate food labelling that has led to obesity and diabetes, a poisoned environment and an “avalanche of failing health and cost burden on taxpayers”.
“Why have we permitted ourselves to get used to this level of numbness, ignorance and stupidity?” he says. “Our greed in our day-to-day survival has taken all our attention and we have thus left it to others to exploit us.”
He has hope for the future and says the scientific community is beginning to recognise and validate natural therapies.
“It is becoming increasingly common to fuse the two worlds of conventional and alternative medicine,” he says. “These two fields no longer have to be at odds but can instead supplement each other to form complementary medicine.
“Globalisation has brought people on the planet closer together, in both positive and negative ways.Only a holistic approach to longevity can save us all from a global catastrophe wherein all will suffer more than ever before – the rich as well as the poor.”
He wants to educate people and provide them with knowledge and wisdom to help themselves, and says healing must start from the inside, out.
“We have a huge sickness industry that cannot make any big money from responsible, healthy people who are interested in preventative medicine,” he says.
He has a warning for the multibillion-dollar natural and alternative medicine industry which he says can no longer be silenced.
“The global powerbrokers have finally acknowledged this truth and now wish to adapt it to their needs – this, after we pioneers had to survive poverty, ridicule and scientific and political attack,” he says.
“We have to work on ourselves as individuals and save ourselves first – before we are able to help save the planet.”