Women In Wellness: Maggie Qiu of SeabuckWonders On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Go with the flow but have awareness of your limits, physically and mentally. Stress is a much bigger issue nowadays- especially during a pandemic. I joke with my mom friends that we were doing 5 full time jobs at the beginning of the pandemic. I was the live classroom assistant teacher, cleaning lady, driver, event planner, while still doing my full-time job to keep my business running smoothly. Even with a healthy diet, I started to have serious acid reflux issues.
As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Maggie Qiu.
Maggie Qiu, proud mother of young twin boys, has a lifelong passion for health, purity and nature which contributed to her enduring commitment to wellness and natural living. With a master’s degree in E-Commerce Technology coupled with her project managing experience forged early at Morningstar Inc., Maggie ventured into the rapidly expanding natural food category with her work on the SeabuckWonders brand. For the past eighteen years, Maggie has utilized her expertise in online marketing to help natural, organic supplement, and personal care brands grow from their very beginnings to become successful Nexty Award brands.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
I moved to Chicago for graduate school in 2001. My original plan was to learn and advance in the corporate world. My boyfriend, now husband — James, was also in the corporate field specializing in E-Commerce solutions. We decided it was time to venture out and create our own businesses.
Our first project was a website focused on the natural food industry. Working together in a community of enthusiasts that shared our passion felt so right! I love the community that is the backbone of the natural products industry. People are so kind and caring, down to earth, and hardworking. They radiate positivity and bring a smile to our faces whenever we would meet and talk to them.
Back in 2004, the natural food and organic category was still very niche and not the mainstream industry that it is today. Still, we decided to follow our hearts and fully dedicate our time on natural health brands, moving away from the corporate world. By combining our strengths and passions, we were able to triple our sales in the first two years.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
It has to be when we were approached by The Dr. OZ. show, back in May 2011.
People are now more familiar with organic food and the wellness benefits from healthy eating than they were at the time our story aired.
Unique super-foods and especially rare fruit were on trend in the natural community. We’d been focused on building our own organic sea buckthorn farm and making sea buckthorn oil for quite some time at that point.
On May 3rd, I got a request from the Dr. Oz Show’s producer team. They wanted to feature sea buckthorn berry as the next super-fruit and show people how well omega-7 (the main fatty acid in sea buckthorn) can be beneficial to our health.
At that time, I was pregnant with my twins and James was on the Tibetan plateau visiting our farms.
As exciting as it was to be contacted by the show, the catch was that they needed the actual sea buckthorn plants and fresh berries in three days to be able to appear on the show! There was no way to express-ship a sea buckthorn tree from Tibet, and fresh berries were not yet in season, and wouldn’t be until late Fall! James had frozen berries in the facility, but they would melt and become mushy during transportation — even if we overnighted them.
Our store manager, who had previously lived in Portland, said she recalled seeing sea buckthorn plants there. So, I pulled a list of all the garden centers in the Portland area and started calling, while James started looking for freeze-dried sea buckthorn berries from our last harvest season in Tibet.
Luckily, we got a “yes” from a nursery garden center who had three sea buckthorn plants. The staff was so kind and even texted me pictures of the plants. They looked like our Himalayan sea buckthorn plants! The nursery was kind enough to bring the plants to UPS for us, and John (I’ll never forget his name!) at UPS helped us with the daunting task of packing 3ft tall, 25lb sea buckthorn plants!
While I dealt with the sea buckthorn plants, James was able to find dried sea buckthorn berries. On May 5th, we had actual plants, berries, and the sea buckthorn staging images all express-shipped to Rockefeller Center in NY.
The takeaway from this story? The kindness of people and their willingness to help others. People will help each other and will even go out of their way when they know it’s to help someone’s health. It’s an amazing feeling.
I was more than thankful for being able to share the real health benefits from a natural source with the world. I’m glad that I can contribute to the health of others with the work that I do. That thought exists in every step of the way as we make our sea buckthorn oil — from farm to shelf.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When I started the business, I covered every aspect of the business with 120% attention — phone calls, emails, managing the store and office. There were times we had to multitask and know all the details. I still agree with that.
If I were to do it again, I would get help from a professional office assistant. I learned to let people do what they are good at, so I can fully concentrate on my own tasks in business to bring efficiency and quality of work. It helps the business move along a timeline and gain more flexibility to enter the market with good timing.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
We are thrilled to pass the gifts from Mother Nature to more people, raising awareness of this tiny orange berry which is packed with amazing plant-based omegas and bio-active nutrients that benefit people’s health.
In Eastern Herbalism, it’s believed that there is a close relationship between nature and human beings. We will be in harmony if we can find balance. We embrace ethical organic practices in our farms on the Tibetan Plateau. Sea buckthorn plants can survive in a harsh environment with dry and cold conditions. The roots of its tree hold the soil together and help to reduce soil erosion from wind and flash floods. It helps prevent desertification tremendously! The hard work we put in to support these trees is well worth it.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
Go with the flow but have awareness of your limits, physically and mentally.
Stress is a much bigger issue nowadays- especially during a pandemic. I joke with my mom friends that we were doing 5 full time jobs at the beginning of the pandemic. I was the live classroom assistant teacher, cleaning lady, driver, event planner, while still doing my full-time job to keep my business running smoothly. Even with a healthy diet, I started to have serious acid reflux issues.
Stress has a bigger impact on our lives than we think. My nutrition program professor is also a psychology professor. It’s been eye opening for me to hear his opinions on the correlation between nutrition, the central and peripheral nervous system, and health issues. Mental health plays a big role in many of the alignments.
To me, real fulfillment comes from learning.
I want to be a lifelong learner. Learning is fun and good for our health! Doesn’t matter if it is a new vegetable/fruit I find at the farmer’s market, a new look I come across at the boutique shop window, or a new joke I learn from my kids, it keeps us going and helps us see the sparkle in our lives.
My grandpa lived until he was 108 years old. He had been through two wars, and serious ups and downs in his life. After he retired as a financial controller, he became a Tai Chi master and a calligraphy master.
He told me the wealth of wisdom and the knowledge we can learn is unlimited. The specific topics or activities didn’t matter-the act of learning and growing keeps us grounded and gives positive energy to go forward in life. Cicero’s “If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need” is so true.
Lay down on the floor and do core work to regain upper body strength and alignment.
I learned this from my amazing tennis friend who specializes in body alignment adjustment. Oftentimes, we don’t realize our sitting and standing posture creates misalignment to our spine, upper body, and lower body.
I have shoulder pain sometimes, thanks to computer work and browsing on my phone. She pointed out that my lower back tends to tilt forward, and it is not on the same vertical line of my heel, my pelvis, and my rib cage. My shoulder muscle naturally tried hard to compensate for that tilt- building up wear and tear.
Lying down on the floor is the easiest way to find correct spine alignment. I found so much relief after doing that several times a week.
Go out and get more sun! (Not just for vitamin D).
The sun is the ultimate source of energy. Think about it, we eat food to supply our body with needed energy. The three macronutrients, carbohydrates, protein, and fats-we need them all.
Where do they all come from? The plants we eat convert the energy from the sun. The fruits do the same. Fat is a different way to store energy and also needs sun. Getting sunshine helps us receive direct energy from the sun and helps ensure our wellbeing.
Eat dinner before 6pm.
An easy-to-follow fasting option if a 16 hour and 24 hour intermediate fasting plan is hard to manage with your daily schedule is to eat dinner before 6pm. If we eat before 6pm, and eat breakfast at 8am, we get 9 hours for our body to naturally fast, burn fat and repair.
Eating an early dinner can help lower blood glucose. A year-long study by scientists at Columbia University has found that those who eat later in the evening are more likely to have high blood pressure, a higher body mass index (MBI) and higher blood sugar level.
Adding plant based unsaturated fat to dinners helps us feel fuller during fasting. It is better than eating simple carbohydrates which spikes blood sugar level, adding pressure to our existing insulin and blood sugar counter balance system
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
Practice mindfulness and deep breathing once a day. We are overloaded with information, tasks, social media pressure (yay, that exists now) etc. And our brain and body can only handle so much. There are a lot of energy goes into processing all this information, cluttering our mind, consciously or unconsciously.
Daily mindfulness and deep breathing practice helps clear the mind while giving the mind and body a chance to decompress and regroup.
Less is more! Our body is a whole. Body parts connect to each other- including the brain. Our emotional wellbeing is tied to our overall wellbeing.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me before I Started” and why?
Partnering with your spouse may not be the best option. LOL!
Most of the phone company sales reps will mess up your current plan and phone line, and it takes forever to fix the plan! LOL.
Have a mentor that can point you in the right direction and act as a truthful accountable partner.
Setting boundaries between work and life. We need time to eat and sleep!
We don’t need to code everything from scratch. Timing of the launch is more important than many of the detailed features that bother me even when I go to bed.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
As you may guess from my previous answers, mental health is my top pick. It’s happening right now, affecting people’s health and wellness. Accessible tools are available to address it. Raise awareness, do simple practices, and support those willing to seek professional help.
Having school age boys, it is heartbreaking to hear the suicidal thoughts among teens driven by loss of confidence and social media peer pressure.
How do all these mental challenges shape a person’s personality and decision-making processes? The trauma or certain behavior pattern can follow them all the way into their adulthood and repeat with their own children. If we plant a seed, we want to remove the pest early on.
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
Please visit us at seabuckwonders.com and our Instagram @seabuckwonders. We post health related blogs, sea buckthorn berries newest researches, and wellness related lifestyle stories, and our farm.
Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.
Women In Wellness: Maggie Qiu of SeabuckWonders On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.