Celebrate Story — To me, joy within your home begins with story and celebrating with enthusiasm what makes your own unique. Within my own home, that means featuring objects and experiences that have grown me. Travelling to remote places with my camera and featuring those photographs in my home, bringing home unique and treasured pieces to remind me of those travels and placing them in spaces that can spark unique conversation with guests such as dining rooms, powder rooms, or the entry.
As part of my series on the “5 Things You Can Do To Help Your Living Space Spark More Joy’’, I had the pleasure of interviewing Paige Gray, Partner and Lead Interior Designer of Parker&Harlow Interiors.
Parker&Harlow — Parker&Harlow Interiors is a boutique interior design firm on British Columbia’s West Coast. Powered by the dynamic mother-daughter duo, Deb Vanderkemp and Paige Gray, their team provides an intuitive reflection of your lifestyle and vision. With a passion for transforming the holistic qualities of the coast into refined spaces that live beautifully and inspire ease, Parker & Harlow has been working in the design industry all along the coast of British Columbia for 28 years.
Thank you so much for joining us in this series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I would say my love for design started at the threshold between adventure and creativity. I’ve always loved stories, in evocative objects, meaningful spaces, and intentional daily practices especially when integrated into our coastal culture. To this day, when I’m not in a creative headspace, I’m finding inspiration in the wilderness hiking in our endless backcountry, chasing waterfalls, and climbing peaks. Our breathtaking landscape here on the west coast of British Columbia is an endless source of inspiration for me.
I began designing furniture and exploring various creative mediums from a young age, which inevitably lured me to attend Emily Carr University for industrial design. At the time, the campus was in the heart of Vancouver on Granville Island, and those years were truly some of the most valuable contributors to my creative practice today. Pressing through personal thresholds, celebrating new discoveries in both success and failure, and finding the pulse on my own design processes gave me insight into the methods I now carry forward into business. I am so grateful to have worked alongside some of the most incredible leading professionals in BC. Over time my love for the coast and deep appreciation for family brought me back to my roots to partner with my incredible mother who’s entrepreneurial expertise added the perfect touch to our longtime dream of launching a design company together. This is where Parker&Harlow was born!
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?
My commute to work has to be the most interesting part of my job. Boats, barges, and ferries are a regular day-to-day occurrence for me. It is something I love about the specialty process of designing on remote islands. Unless of course it’s in a February winter storm, on a very small ferry boat headed to a secluded coastal island where the ocean is lapping through the boat deck- but still a very interesting adventure!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Heels on the job site just isn’t the most practical situation when you work on islands in the heart of a west coast rainforest and your project is in the thick of landscaping, masonry, and a water irrigation upgrade! Luckily, the precarious situation was resolved quickly with a pair of Blundstones I keep in my vehicle for hiking. A practical and very “west-coast” solution.
What are some of the most interesting or exciting projects you are working on now? How do you think that might help people?
Many of our clients hire us because we specialize in full-scale renovations on remote islands up the coast. One of our current projects is located on Cortes Island, BC and the residence serves as a second home for our clients who lived primarily in Vancouver before purchasing their coastal retreat during the start of the pandemic. During these precarious times, lifestyles are shifting and with these changes many of our clients and trades are looking to embrace new avenues of escaping to, and harnessing, the immeasurable gifts of our secluded coast. This helps our clients find balance, and helps us to employ an extensive trade resource on projects that are unlike any other. Many of our trades have been living on Cortes Island over the past year as this comprehensive project has come through an intense upgrade. The results are a beautiful reflection of what it looks like when passion meets the design process on many levels. It has been a magical process, and we have lapped up every moment of our time working on this gorgeous island with our amazing team.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Do or do not, there is no try”. -Yoda
Although many Maya Angelou quotes come to mind, the intense commitment that comes to play with the specific work we take on requires a more direct inspiration. This quote is still on a sticky note on my bathroom mirror, and I soak it in every morning. Although there is merit in trying, it is a mindset driven by the fear of failure. In my own life, personally and professionally, when I was able to cut my own internally constructed excuses and exercise a “do” mentality, it took the fear out of leaping into unknowns. Let go of the fear of failing and trust that your innate human grit has the potential to propel your life into meaningful spaces where fear becomes your fuel not your roadblock.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Many people within the industry that I’ve gained the most experience from are also those who have oddly caused me the greatest heartache. There is a standard in interior design that needs immense overhaul — that junior designers are an expendable resource.
Unpaid internships for big names in the industry were something I felt niched into accepting, and although it came with valuable life lessons, I knew right away that this type of leadership wasn’t a practice I was willing to bring forward into my own business.
Both of my parents have been business owners their entire lives. Leading with a “people-first” mindset has provided them the opportunity of guiding the same employees for over thirty years. There is tremendous value and honour in this type of leadership, and I’m so grateful to have been raised with such tremendous examples of how to respect and honour employees while fostering a nurturing environment for them to succeed.
It is the main contributor to partnering with my mother, who’s grace, patience, and attention to detail has become a cornerstone in the way we celebrate our team at Parker&Harlow. I have gratitude for both sides of my experience in this industry, to the companies who gave me the gift of feeling undervalued and the incredible woman who stands beside me now in business to ensure no employee in our own team ever feels that way.
Thank you for that. Here is the main question of our discussion. What are your “5 Things You Can Do To Help Your Living Space Spark More Joy” and why. Please share a story or example for each.
Celebrate Story
To me, joy within your home begins with story and celebrating with enthusiasm what makes your own unique. Within my own home, that means featuring objects and experiences that have grown me. Travelling to remote places with my camera and featuring those photographs in my home, bringing home unique and treasured pieces to remind me of those travels and placing them in spaces that can spark unique conversation with guests such as dining rooms, powder rooms, or the entry.
Organize and Edit
Taking on a minimal lifestyle is difficult for everyone, but paring down your functional spaces so that you spend less time moving things you don’t need to get to the things you do, makes cleanup so much faster and gives you more time to enjoy the space rather than working on it. Also upgrading mismatched items like mugs, cups and cutlery has oddly given me immense joy when setting the table and gathering with friends and family.
Our furry friends
There is a dynamic humour and joy that radiates from our dogs in my own household and I’m sure any pet owner can agree that they just make life better. They give balance to the otherwise overwhelming perfection of a “still” home. They’re the movers and shakers, keeping life on its toes. They also drive us to go outside our home, exploring our coast, which keeps life inside our home more holistic and centered. For Deb and I in business, they’re also the inspiration behind our name!
Make a Mess
Spaces are made to be used, and this means bringing people in to celebrate it with you. Whether it’s kids’ science experiments on the dining room table or dirt and mud from messy paws that have galloped through gardens leaving trails across the floor for you to find, find joy in the moments that would usually cause you to feel anxiety or stress. The dirty paw prints belong to those creatures you can’t live without. The erupting volcano on your table is a precious pillar to childhood exploration, and the aftermath of that dinner party is also the moment your home feels most relaxed and appreciated by those you love.
Never Stop Evolving
Spaces should be a reflection of ourselves, and with that, they are ever-changing, complex, sporadic depictions of where our lives are at any given moment. Play around with your layout. Growing up, Deb (My Mum) and I would often spend the evening rearranging furniture while my Dad was out of the house. He would come home to a whole new design and smile at the faces of the two ladies in his life feeling very accomplished for their efforts. Who would have known back then that those very women would be running their design company together with equal enthusiasm and joy!
You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I would have to return to the time in my own life that influenced me to reach beyond my own capabilities and direct this question/conversation to the field of education. University is an incredible space for young adults to grow and find the unique ways they fit into and influence the world. Finding ways to bring enthusiasm and funding initiatives that aim to send more kids on the path to higher education would be amazing. Quite often the task of applications and the pressure to know exactly where to go outweighs the act of simply going out and doing! My own path began with fine arts, shifted to architecture, and circled back into interior design. Minds can change, career paths shift and accommodate, and if there was a way to spark passion and support more kids to take that leap on to university level learning — I’m all for it! Especially in the fields of creative arts, design, and more philanthropic-centered education paths.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might see this, especially if we tag them 🙂
The roots of this particular family-run multi-faceted company have inspired me since the beginning. With the many initiatives and brands they have come to lead as well as the cadence, spirit, and vigor clearly expressed in each member of their team, I have to say Joanna and Chip Gaines. Now, I’m aware that’s two people, but some of the best things come in pairs especially with family-run business. Their quirky authenticity together, as well as the baseline they hold for family and personal space, is something I truly admire.
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational!
Female Founders: Kim and Keyondra Lockett On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
We think more women should be founders because it helps women mold and create the business model that they want to see and insert more women in the workforce. It also helps a woman to be a legacy builder. As black women, in particular, we do not see a lot of black women, or women in general, having the opportunity to leave a legacy.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Kimberly Lockett.
Kimberly Lockett, Keys2LuxLife, is an Atlanta based celebrity fashion stylist. Kim is no stranger to the fashion industry, having spent over 10 years as a personal and celebrity wardrobe stylist, she has gained experience coordinating all aspects of a client’s image. While Kim’s work has been seen on various national platforms and television networks such as BET, HypeHair.com, Essence Magazine and more, her personal style has been featured and recognized in major online publications and blogs such as Essence.com, 50 Fab Fashion Instagrammers (2012) and a Fashionbombdaily.com, Fashion Bombshell of the Day (2015).
Keyondra is a #1 Billboard Chart Topping singer-songwriter. She has shared the stage with artists such as Yolanda Adams, CeCe Winans, Kirk Franklin, Mary Mary, and many more.
She’s also the first and only gospel artist to have a licensing deal with a toy company.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
We are honored to share! Thank you for having us. We both share a love for fashion and have always wanted to be entrepreneurs. As kids, we were the girls who had to have every doll and all her accessories. When we couldn’t get the accessories we would create dresses and handbags from socks, tissue, scrunchies, rubber bands, and cardboard (for purses)! We were also the girls with the lemonade stand going door-to-door to make a sale. In high school, I (Kim) had a dream to one day design my own clothing and have it sold in all the fashion capitals of the world. In 2009 Keyondra had the idea to create an online eyewear brand. We named it The Red Glasses Sisters (RGS) because we wore red glasses then. What we didn’t realize is that business wouldn’t be our breakout thing, but it was the catalyst to where we are now. We learned a lot about what not to do while running RGS. We desperately needed a rebrand because RGS was very limited in the name alone. We had a decent sized male following and the glasses part didn’t allow us to seamlessly grow. So we sought out a new name. As we sat and thought about new names and the direction of our new venture Keyondra continued her singing career where she found a passion for encouraging women and girls. I continued in my wardrobe styling career and worked towards a master’s degree in counseling. In my studies, I learned of several statistics that shed light on the state of black women, in the US alone, which made me dig deeper for names for our new business venture. Since we’re from Louisiana we decided to tap into French culture and name our business, Jolie Noire. We could have said Pretty Black but we wanted it to spark conversation. It only made sense that we advocated for black women because Keyondra used her platform for women’s empowerment and the statistics shed light on the need for a community and safe space for black women to be celebrated. The cool thing about our mission is even men find it valuable so we had to create a small space in the Jolie Noire closet so they too can be represented. Our main mission still exists, to promote and show representation of black women, but we do realize underrepresentation is a blackness issue, not just black women.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
The most interesting thing that’s happened to us since starting is when Target approached us for the black history month partnership. It was so cool and unbelievable at the same time. The Sr. Buyer of the multicultural dept contacted us via our business email and Kim’s personal email addresses. When Kim read it, she couldn’t believe it so she sent a screenshot of the email to our group text between the two of us, our mom and our business coach, at the time. After our business coach confirmed it was her, we screamed and cried with joy, before knowing what “opportunity” she had in mind! We had a meeting with her a few days after responding to her email and here we are now with an exclusive Jolie Noire collection sold in all Target stores and target.com!
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
We can think of several mistakes we’ve made when we first started but we can’t say they were funny… Hah! We’ve made jokes about them but at the time we couldn’t see the humor. One of those mistakes is we trusted the numbers of a large Instagram influencer without really looking at their history. We took the word of their manager as gold and because they had a lot of followers, we didn’t do sufficient homework. The influencer had an event that they wanted emerging black businesses to sponsor. We were to provide clothing for them to get ready for the big day and pay $700 for our name to be featured on the step-and-repeat, at the event. The process was so rushed and went so fast. That should have been a red flag for us, but we proceeded. Once the day came, they were supposed to wear the pieces and mention what they were wearing and where it was from and create a video that we could share on our platform. They wore one piece but never mentioned where they got the piece, they never did the video, and the other pieces conveniently got lost in the mail. We followed up with their team several months without any resolution. We had to count it as a loss. We made several funny moments when speaking about influencers, based on that experience, and learned to slow down and research each opportunity. If we cannot take the time to research, it’s not the collaboration for us.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Not to sound cliche, but we must thank our mom. She has supported us in EVERYTHING we’ve ever done and Jolie Noire is no different. She has been our financial investor. Keyondra and I had very little finances to start Jolie Noire. We started with about $100 of our own money, added roughly $2000 more, over time, and she has funded the rest, which is A LOT!
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
While we’re proud of the progress women have made, we can’t agree more that there is still a lot of work to be done! We think women are the group that the phrase “representation matters’’ resonates with most. We haven’t had many examples of women doing things outside of the norm, such as founding companies, and it’s hard to see ourselves in all types of spaces. If you’ve never had someone encouraging you, at home to be whatever you wanted, or whatever you deemed achievable, and you rarely, if ever, saw an example of women doing those “out of the box” things outside of the home, finding the courage to step out can be tough. It’s tough for those of us who have had examples of fearless women around us. We believe it starts in the mind. Your mind is initially shaped by your home environment. If we can overcome the obstacles of the mind, we can achieve a lot more. Another obstacle is finances. It’s tough finding funding for women-owned businesses. Unfortunately, women aren’t as respected as men are when it comes to finances and lenders and investors don’t take us as seriously. We often have to rely on our own resources just to start.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
If it’s the obstacle of the mind that we’re overcoming, we suggest as an individual, seek counseling to help reframe thoughts as well as to assist in planning. Have a circle of close friends or family who are eager to see you win. Network with other women founders and even men founders to see how they went about starting their businesses. Decide what of that information will fuel you and what of it is information to be stored to help another aspiring woman founder. As a society, we need to support women founded businesses. We feel men should use their voices to speak on their view of the importance of women, in business, and women should continue to model why we are so valuable. On a governmental level, there should be a nurturing of programs to teach women about business and incentives to owning or supporting women founded businesses.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
We think more women should be founders because it helps women mold and create the business model that they want to see and insert more women in the workforce. It also helps a woman to be a legacy builder. As black women, in particular, we do not see a lot of black women, or women in general, having the opportunity to leave a legacy.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
A myth we’d love to dispel that everyone can be and should be a founder. Not everyone has what it takes to lead or grow a business. Being a founder of a business can be super stressful, at times, and honestly, everyone cannot handle the stress. Also, to build a business, with a team, you have to display great leadership skills or at least be able to delegate that responsibility to a partner. Though all great leaders are great followers, not all great followers are great leaders. The reality is not everyone wants to be a founder of a company. Some people truly love to help someone else see their vision through. Everyone can’t do everything. It’s not realistic.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
I guess we should have read ahead! Ha. Other than having great leadership skills, some other traits a great founder would likely be open to change, a critical thinker, self-motivated, just to name a few. We always say never be married to an idea. A founder should be open to changes that take place, within their industry, be that daily, weekly, monthly, or every 5 years. The ability to adapt to that change, and accept it, makes all the difference. Critical thinking is a necessary life skill that unfortunately not everyone uses. As a founder we have to be able to solve problems such as how to adapt to the changes mentioned previously and how to continue moving your business forward in an ever-changing economy. The most important of them all, in our opinion, is the ability to be self-motivated. If you need someone to push you to do your job, you probably should choose a “regular job”.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Five things we wish someone would have told us before we started are influencers with a large following will not automatically turn into sales, don’t depend on family to support your business, there’s no perfect timing, just start, develop a solid marketing strategy, you have more in your hands than you think. Concerning influencers, it’s important to understand, not all user generated content, including the content you pay for, will yield an immediate financial gain. It’s best to view influencers as a potential sale but a guaranteed ad. That way, you will be able to strategize and select your influencers wisely.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
Our initial mission was to empower black women to build them up to continue being incredible forces in society. Since we’ve started, our mission has grown to encompass black men as well. Now that we have the Target partnership, we’ve been able to further our message all while bringing a sense of unity between cultures, with non-black women taking interest in supporting our efforts. We now have other races of women asking if they can be a part of our movement, by purchasing. We are normalizing wearing whatever because it’s beautiful, not because of who did or didn’t create it.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
It’s our hope that our business concept is that movement. Our efforts don’t solely impact black women, men, and children but it can continue to bridge gaps in the fashion industry and ultimately several others causing a greater surge of unity across cultures.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
We’d love to sit down with Oprah Winfrey. She’s broken so many barriers as a woman and person of color. She’s so inspiring and her efforts aren’t specific to one generation of women.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Founders: Ivana Darmawan of Kasih Co-op On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Learn fast, try a lot of things and fail fast. You need to always iterate to see what is working. I started out with jewelry and then ikat pouf, to batik face masks and now iterating into wooden home goods and linens. If you keep on testing fast, you’ll find your product market fit and invest in those.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Ivana Darmawan.
Ivana Darmawan is the founder of Kasih Co-op, which partners with Indonesian artisans to create authentic and unique pieces for home and lifestyle, including batik kimono robes, linens, wooden home goods and handwoven ikat throws.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I grew up in Indonesia and Singapore and moved to Los Angeles for college at UCLA. Growing up, my mom was always entrepreneurial and I’ve always been taught to start my own business since I was young. In middle school, I’d be selling greeting cards at school and I worked as a cashier for my family’s business during summer break. I also saw the challenges that my mom went through to start her own business as a female and that inspired me to have my own business supporting other women.
In Indonesia, I grew up loving handmade products because many artisans have learned this craft for centuries, so I appreciate our handmade, hand-dyed batik fabric, handwoven ikat fabric and wooden home goods that our Indonesian artisans make. Now that I call Los Angeles home, I long to bring these handmade artisan products that I grew up with and share with people who appreciate handmade and unique items with stories behind them. That’s how I started Kasih Co-op.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
I started Kasih Co-op because of my love for handmade products and wanting to bring artisanal products to the world. Most recently, while working with a batik artisan in Central Java, they shared with us that they don’t produce much batik made using wax and dye technique anymore because it is more costly. It is more difficult to produce because they have to use copper plates to apply the hot wax onto the white fabric and then hand-dye the batik, sometimes multiple times. Instead, they have been producing printed batik fabric that is more cost effective and there is more demand. Kasih Co-op was one of the few companies that are still requesting batik fabrics made with hot wax and dye. I feel a little sad thinking that these artisans’ skills are not being preserved and may one day be forgotten and that is something that has really inspired me to do more with our brand. I’m also glad that we are able to continue to keep these artisans and their businesses going.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
When the pandemic hit in early 2020, my husband read an article in The New York Times in April 2020 that batik fabric is one of the best materials for face masks because it is made with tightly woven cotton fabric. I’ve been working with artisans in Indonesia to make pillows with batik fabric, so I pivoted and started making batik face masks. We were so ambitious that we decided to make 10,000 face masks as our first order — we designed the masks ourselves and got started making them with the artisans in Indonesia. To make a long story short, we should have started with a smaller number of masks ordered so we could perfect the design first. Being in different continents means that some misunderstanding is bound to happen — even though I speak the language fluently. It all worked out because we were eventually able to fix our issues. We got the first batch of products in LA within one month of coming up with the idea and then spent some time fixing the design issues too.
Since then, we learned to always start with a sample of products, document everything and we also now have a Quality Control team in place to ensure all our products are up to standard. Because we work with artisans, they tend to be smaller businesses and also specialized, so we will have to account for this when creating products to ensure smooth production.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
I’m very grateful for my mom. She is my biggest mentor and supporter. She’s been training me on how to be a female founder since I was in elementary school. My mom helped expand her family’s business in the 1990s and she would travel on weekdays all over Indonesia to open new stores and then spend weekends with us. I also saw the challenges she faced being a woman in Indonesia to have her own business so I have a lot to learn from her.
She always pushes me to learn how to make Kasih Co-op bigger and to figure out product market fit. Since she is in Indonesia, she is my go-to-person to see the details and finishes of our products.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
Since I have children on my own now, I see the problem partially starts with an unconscious bias we do while raising our girls. As parents, I will remind myself to always encourage my children (son and daughter), to always try new things even if they are not familiar with it. I also want to ensure I am not limiting what my daughter and son do so they do not grow up with this unconscious bias of what their gender can or cannot be and achieve. I want my daughter to grow up being confident that they can try what they set their minds to, even if they may fail and things don’t have to fall perfectly.
Another thing that is holding back women from founding companies is their network. As females, we need to band together to support each other. When I went to UCLA for business school, the majority of the students were male and for raising money or mentorship — a lot of this network to raise funding will be male dominant. To start a company or raise money, you will start from your network first and that is partially why it’s harder for women.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
Start young. I talked to my daughter since she was 5 years old about the day-to-day operations of running Kasih Co-op. I shared about the batik making process, marketing, how you have to spend money in marketing to get sales, fulfillment etc. She also helps me when I have a pop-up shop from time to time. Let them see how women lead and start businesses.
Expose and introduce girls and females to your female networks. I get together with female founders locally and check in with them. What are the things that they are struggling with, what can we do and brainstorm to solve it. It’s like an informal Vistage — founders network.
Don’t be afraid to reach out to your networks to ask for introductions. This is something I learned from business school that I was not accustomed to otherwise. I was not used to going to events and to go to a group and start introducing myself, or reach out to people I know in my network to ask for informational interviews.It’s a good skill to learn.
It’s great seeing the corporations and society start to include diversity in leadership.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Women are 50% of the world population but yet underrepresented in companies and governments which create future innovations, technology and products. We need more women to voice out what the 50% of population is yearning for, to represent our point of view
Coming from the technology and finance industry, it’s quite common to have more men and when designing products, I see how women add a different point of view in creating products. With women founders, we will be able to bring our point of view in design and product development.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
That you need to raise large amounts of money to be a founder. You create a company that works for you — and sometimes that means you will need to raise money from outside sources to achieve the vision you want. Other times, you can raise money from friends and family or bootstrap to achieve it.
That other founders in the same industry won’t want to share and exchange ideas. I have found that many founders are willing to share their experiences — sure they won’t share their secret sauces for their company but I have found that they are willing to share learnings that will benefit others.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
No, I don’t think everyone is cut out to be a founder. Specific traits that will likely make a successful founder are risk-taking, grits and conviction. There is a lot of uncertainty in starting a business — some days there are small successes and other days there are lots of failures and lows. To be a founder, you have to believe in your idea so much that you’ll take risk — quit your job, invest a lot of your own money to kick start the idea, and also grind just to keep on chipping away at the obstacle to get to your success.
It’s a little tough thinking about what type of person should seek a regular job because I have also met people who are not as risk-taking but they are successful founders, so there is a combination of traits, timing and network going on.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Learn fast, try a lot of things and fail fast. You need to always iterate to see what is working. I started out with jewelry and then ikat pouf, to batik face masks and now iterating into wooden home goods and linens. If you keep on testing fast, you’ll find your product market fit and invest in those
You have to spend money to make money. For ecommerce, you need to be willing/ budget for marketing spend for trade show, advertising, PR and more to get people to know your brand and willing to try out your brand
Always be testing. Test out with a small set of products and see which ones resonate with people. Going to pop up shops, meeting people, getting their feedback is useful to understand this.
Own your competitive advantage. When I first started out my business, I brought over another woman owned business products to sell here, but I don’t own the design and product process. There’s a lot of risk in that — can that business scale with me if needed, can I have input on the design and product. Now with all our Kasih Co-op’s offerings, I am involved in the design and product. You can’t find our products elsewhere because we work with the artisans directly, design the pattern and color, and work with our seamstresses or wood workers for the end products.
Talk to other business owners to learn or to get mentorship. They are always open to helping.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
There are a few ways we are marking the world a better place:
We prioritize working with women owned businesses, over 50% of our artisans are women owned businesses.
During the pandemic, we are one of the steady few customers that are still working together with our artisans despite the economic slowdown.
Furthermore, we are preserving this centuries old batik wax and dye technique. Some of our artisans are only producing hand-stamped and hand-dyed batik for us because it is too expensive to produce and people prefer printed batik.
A portion of our profit goes towards supporting Indonesian girls’ education by working with Yayasan Usaha Mulia, a non profit organization highly rated by Global Giving. This is because for high school, I received a fully paid scholarship to study in Singapore where I met people from different countries and backgrounds and saw how the scholarship they received in Indonesia allowed them to improve themselves. One of my good friends in Singapore came over to study with all her savings with very little help from her family, and now she is a cancer researcher. That really opened my eyes on how the education system can help you.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
When you die, people don’t remember how much money you make in your life — but instead you’re remembered by how many people were touched by your life.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Before choosing to stay in the US, I had wanted to return to Indonesia and start a microfinance business investing in women entrepreneurs. I had a chance to meet Muhammad Yunus in 2009, who received a noble prize winner for pioneering the concept of microcredit. It’ll be great to meet with him again to exchange ideas on social entrepreneurship.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this
Women In Wellness: Dr Lauren Bachman On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Team work, makes the dream work: If it makes sense, consider a partnership — working with skilled, equally driven people to achieve the same goal can make the experience much less painless and more rewarding. As humans we are social beings, and want to share successes together. Additionally, it’s an incredible opportunity to diversify and leverage more skillsets, bringing a more well rounded, and throughout process and experience with your business.
As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Lauren Bachman.
Dr. Lauren Bachman is a Doctor of Nursing practice and Board Certified Functional Medicine Practitioner through the institute for Functional medicine. She is passionate about empowering individuals to create health for themselves, in ways they never knew was possible. Through a holistic framework that blends functional medicine, energy medicine, and evidence informed practices, Dr Bachman offers patients a well-rounded approach to treating and regressing disease, preventing disease, and optimizing health and wellness.
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 can’t help but go “way” back, sharing that I grew up on a family farm in the Midwest — my dad was a dairy farmer, and he always was intentional about his farming practice to be sound, humane and regenerative for both the land and the animals he cared for (every cow had a name, not a number — and truly were part of our family). From a young age, I was steeped in the experiences of nature (from birth to death, composting and regeneration to season change and learning how the contrast of dark and light — summer and winter all play a role in balance and regeneration or new life). I didn’t know it at the time, but these experiences were providing me with the foundation of the deep wisdom which lives within the teaching of nature’s process, which has undoubtedly come full circle, in guiding my practice of caring for people. Professionally my early career started as a Registered Nurse in medical oncology (caring for those who had cancer). I spent many years at one of the world’s most recognized hospitals seeing some of the rarest forms of disease. I loved the work, but over time began to develop discontentment in my work- recognizing that we were so myopically focused on disease that we really weren’t talking about how to help people be well, have quality of life, and optimize their health, and we certainly weren’t identifying ways that we could prevent the disease or influence relapse or spread, even though I had a deep knowing this was possible. From here, I began my journey in research on more holistic ways to address disease , which ultimately led me to discover functional medicine — and make the decision to go back to school to become a Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) , specifically as an adult gerontology nurse practitioner. After graduating with my DNP from ASU, I immediately began training with the institute for functional medicine (IFM) and have since completed board certification, as a Institute for Functional medicine Certified practitioner. I have practiced as a functional medicine consultant, in both in person and online settings as well as a Clinical Director in Public Sector Insurance and Wellness Programs.
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?
As it pertains to my current entrepreneurial pursuits, I think one of the most interesting stories on my journey with Benehealth, is that soon after making the decision to go into business with my partners, I became pregnant. I had joked frequently that my business and baby have the same gestation — or that I am having twins, just one of my babies was the business. Although I continue to learn and experience from this story — since this coexistence is ongoing, (especially now that I have had my son, and opened the doors to our business) but there are two main takeaways of this for me and it can be summed up in the two cliche sentiments: “If there is a will there’s a way” and “it takes a village”. First, “if there is a will there’s a way” represents that no matter what you go after in life you are going be thrown curve balls or experience roadblocks, but these things don’t have to be crippling and mean that you shouldn’t move forward — it’s learning to pivot, finding the silver lining, and appreciate that maybe the detour you have to take is really the scenic route that has a lot to offer you. And “it takes a village” is recognition that creating good things (no matter if this a new business or new habit) almost never happens in isolation or by the work of one person alone. It is truly invaluable to have business partners, with a shared vision, who are not only dedicated to creating that vision, but supporting each other in doing so. And of course — support of family and friends cannot go unnoticed either. Take away: Surround yourself with those who are inspired, motivated, and community minded — you will be bound to grow while being taken care of.
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?
Time is the most valuable, and finite resource; but also your greatest teacher! Time management is by far one of my biggest challenges and I think this is very relatable in today’s busy, modern world!.
I think one of the challenges I faced initially is that there is a lot of fluidity, and shifting that occurs with a new business, week to week and month to month things look vastly different and for someone who likes structure and routine it forced me to be more nimble, and flexible with my time. I found that I would plan to have time to get project X done, but situation or meeting W came up and was more immediate. Having to adjust and find time for X created a backlog… another not so fun situation for a type A person, hoping to get that check box at the end of the day. This has definitely allowed me to realize that a lot of stress around time, we create ourselves. As long as the priority items are addressed, what is there really to be concerned about? You can come back to your working “project X” tomorrow and life will go on. Letting go of the rigidity I created for myself, and instead creating a more flexible “Master To do” — for the week or month, has been an effective tool for me. This allowed me focus, but didn’t push me to overwork or stress myself to get things done. Another element that I learned around time management that has been really important is carving out “non-negotiable” times to ensure I get self-care done — whether this is exercise, meditation, or pleasure reading, creating space at the start or end of my day was critical to ensure that I was balanced and my cup was full for not only creating my business but also showing up for my family!
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?
“Healthier people create healthier families, which lead to healthier communities”. Human Beings are wired for homeostasis or balance and health- When there are long term disturbances in the system, this is strained. We live in a time when people have become disconnected with nature, and therefore disconnected with their body’s and their health. We are on a mission to help regain the innate connection and knowing, to reclaim this connection, and allow people to discover their unique path to healing, health optimization and overall well being. Discovering this capacity to heal is one of the most powerful gifts a person can experience, and they naturally want to share it with everyone they care about and for! We hope to bring humanism back to healthcare.Redirect sick care, to wellness focused care, and prevention over intervention! And restoring human health is not isolated from many other pressing issues of our time either, as we can improve the health of humans, we will likely positively influence other problems of our time, such as the mental health crisis, regenerative practices and elimination of toxic elements in consumerism — since so many of our problems today are sewn from the same thread.
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.
Be mindful of your exposures: “Exposures” can be anything from the ingredients or contaminants in your food, cosmetics, and household cleaning products to air and water quality. Before we can make changes, we have to recognize the problem. Most people recognize that chemicals and other harmful compounds like toxic metals etc. are harmful for their health — and would typically avoid them if they knew they were there. Unfortunately today, the US food system alone has over 10,000 chemicals that are directly or indirectly added to processed and packaged food, which makes over 60% of the American diet. Using websites like the EWG that provide consumer guides to food, water, cosmetics, household cleaners and more is a great place to start to build awareness of what is the food you’re eating and products your using; and learn about healthier and safer alternatives.
Prioritize sleep (at night time): Sleep and the health of your circadian rhythm are critically important for overall health and balance. I like to think of quality of sleep and the health of your circadian rhythm as the foundation in which you are placing all your other health pillars (like healthy diet, exercise, etc). If this foundation is unstable, the other pillars won’t be as strong. Meaning you could be eating the healthiest diet, and exercising everyday, but not getting any results, because you are regularly getting poor sleep. The best way start improving your health is keep a consistent bedtime and waketime, get regular natural light exposure (outdoors preferably) during the day, and avoid light exposure, especially from electronics at night (ideally after sunset).
Eat whole real food: This means, ditch the packaged items with an ingredient list 20 items long, and instead learn to get comfortable with preparing the whole sourced item. Instead of veggie chips that are 100+ times removed from the whole product, make veggie fries, with fresh carrots, beets and sweet potato. Our biology has evolved with nature for hundreds of millions of years. What our system recognizes as food is that it is provided by nature, not the chemical, highly processed and refined “imitation” food that makes up 80% of the grocery store. SHop the perimeter of the grocery store, start with simple recipes, and you’ll find that those 10 lbs you’ve been battling, might just come off on their own or the aches and pains might lessen. Food choices are one of the most powerful tools in creating health and wellness.
Manage your stress: Stress is one of the most ubiquitous insults to our health today. We live in a world where we are constantly having to be somewhere or do something, not to mention worry about the many personal, local, national and global issues. IT can be really daunting..why it’s no surprise that anxiety is the most common mental health condition in the US affecting over 40 million American adults! Stress not only influences our mental health, but physical health too, with direct impact on disease risk like heart disease and other metabolic conditions like obesity and type 2 diabetes. Getting a handle on stress is often one of the hardest lifestyle areas for people to address, because it is so multifactorial. My recommendations always start with the easiest things to control. You’re never going to eliminate stress from you life — and that’s not the goal — but it;s learning to eliminate the things you can and find strategies that work for you to be able to manage this rest.
Move your body: This is not anything new, by now we probably have all heard that “sitting is the new smoking” suggesting that being sedentary is as bad for your health as smoking cigarettes. We know that movement is critical for not only healthy weight, and optimizing the bodies metabolic systems, but beyond that influences everything from our gut health, inflammation and the immune system to balancing our mental health and outlook. If that isn’t enough — physical activity is essential in preserving and optimizing our physical fitness, reducing the risk of frailty, injury and debility as we age. So with that — Exercise or rather movement, is SO much more than achieving a certain physique or number on the scale. Also, we don’t have to be killing ourselves at the gym to receive the benefit. Regular movement is the key, such as walking more (at least 10,000 steps a day) and sitting less. You can even build in movement throughout your work day. Like 10 squats every hour, or walking on your lunch break. When it comes to exercise I always encourage people to do something they enjoy to make it easier to stick to even if this might not fit their view of “exercise”.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
This is tough, because there are many things on my passion list. However, if I had to choose on things that could bring the quickest solution for improved wellness to the masses would be the rejection of processed and fast food and create the public demand for more transparency and regulation of what is put into and onto our food. Eating organic, and properly raised/produced whole real food is one of the most important priorities for not only human health but environmental health as well.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
Be Flexible — business starts are fast paced and fluid. You have to be ready and dynamic for the inevitable “change of plans’ that will come with starting a business.
Time management: never assume you will have time to do it later; if you have time to do it now, take advantage! I learned that I put things off early on in our planning and development phase, assuming that I would have time for things later- and that just isn’t the case. Take advantage of the time you have, when you have. And on the same note of time management, make sure you have healthy boundaries and build in time for self care and time away — the creative and logistical demands of starting a business can’t be met, if you aren’t showing up 100% Taking care of you, is also an investment in your business.
Murphy’s law may be a real phenomena — so be ready: Preparing for the worst and expecting the best, isn’t a bad mentality to hold when you are working on getting a business started. There are a lot of moving parts, and there is inevitably going to be some breakdown along the way. Having an attitude that is ready for a “less than ideal” situation or outcome, will make it much easier to pivot and move forward, rather than be blind sided and dwell on a “should’ve, could’ve, would’ve” mentality.
Team work, makes the dream work: If it makes sense, consider a partnership — working with skilled, equally driven people to achieve the same goal can make the experience much less painless and more rewarding. As humans we are social beings, and want to share successes together. Additionally, it’s an incredible opportunity to diversify and leverage more skillsets, bringing a more well rounded, and throughout process and experience with your business.
Expectation setting — Starting a business is no easy feat, and at the very least will demand quite a bit of your time and energy. This is not only important for your own recognition, but also for those you are close to, including your family and friends. Discussing these anticipated changes with your family and friends, allows you to prioritize time away from work with them, and also creates the opportunity to ask for help or assistance to maintain balance and peace (especially at home).
Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Environmental changes — this particular hits home because I have children that will be faced with consequences of our actions today. We have the opportunity to make things better for our children and the generations to come. Being part of this cause is not an option, but a moral obligation. I see my work with healthcare an important influence, as so much of what I do is education, and encouraging informed consumerism — which is one of the most powerful influences we have. One simple example, plastic is not only toxic to the environment, but to human health — we should be avoiding it, and replacing it with safer alternatives like reusable glass and stainless — If we keep buying plastic, they’ll keep making it.
What is the best way our readers can follow you online?
Female Founders: Suteja and Paula Grace of Inner Treasure Hunt On The Five Things You Need To Thrive and Succeed as a Woman Founder
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
The job is non-stop. There is no such thing as a weekend. Weekends have lost their meaning as a time of rest and rejuvenation. Every day you work. You dream about the enterprise in your sleep. You wake up in the middle of the night and make notes so you don’t forget ideas that come to you at odd hours. It’s like having a child — you don’t ever get to ignore the baby crying in the next room, needing your attention to grow and develop.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing co-founders Suteja and Paula Grace from Inner Treasure Hunt. Suteja is a former monastic whose approach is a unique hybrid of ancient traditions, modern science, natural healing, and practical application. She doesn’t believe she is anyone’s guru: she is a teacher and guide who helps people find and heal themselves. Paula Grace produces the educational content and manages the website.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Suteja: Most people ask mystical questions at some point in their life. “Who am I?” “Where did I come from?” “Why am I here?” The questions are intriguing and seem to lead to a great unknown awaiting discovery, but they get put on the back-burner due to the obligations of living. These questions stayed center stage in my life and I spent a lot of time seeking answers.
I went deep and was able to heal myself from chronic fatigue syndrome and create a strong philosophy of life that supports me through difficulties. For me, seeking answers to mystical questions is very practical in terms of one’s physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. Now I’m sharing my findings with people who are in difficulty, especially with the pandemic, the isolation, and the uncertainty of our time.
Paula: After studying social psychology in grad school, I counseled at-risk youth in a group home, which was emotionally rewarding but financially debilitating. I couldn’t make a car payment much less buy a house, and dinner was often one cheap beer and the free chips and taquitos at a local cantina. I didn’t want to leave the non-profit world where I knew I was doing good for others, but I couldn’t continue living a hand-to-mouth existence. After grappling with this dilemma for some time, I decided that I needed financial security and that once I’d found a steady, livable income, I could donate my time and money to worthy causes.
A friend suggested that I would make a good salesperson and she was right. I switched careers and started selling computers at the birth of the tech revolution. In those pre-internet days there were no user manuals so I had to train the lawyers, CPAs, and doctors I was selling equipment to because if I didn’t, they’d return it and I’d lose my commission. I felt like I was still doing good in the world because my customers were thrilled with their Commodores, Osbornes and Apple IIs, and ecstatic when Lotus released Visi-Calc with its revolutionary 32KB program.
But more importantly, I fell in love with training. I say that because there’s nothing better than seeing the lightbulb go off when someone learns something, or witnessing the sense of accomplishment that comes when someone is able to do something new for the first time. Training is like another form of doing good by passing on knowledge and skills. I was offered a full-time training job and jumped at the chance, starting a forty-year career spent developing organizational talent from the front-line to the C-suite. Working hard and dumb luck have allowed me to buy a car, make a house payment, and donate my time and money to charity. Most importantly, Inner Treasure Hunt would not have been possible without all that I gained from the wonderful people I worked with and the advanced technology I used at the companies I worked for, for which I am eternally grateful.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
Suteja:
I’d been healing people through Ayurveda and massage for many years, which I loved doing, but there was a part of me that wasn’t satisfied, namely the teacher part. I ached to share all that I’d learned and put into practice, in ways that could do as much good as possible. I was waiting for some kind of opening to focus more on teaching, and could intuitively feel that the time for a school was coming closer.
I was thinking about closing my healing practice to have more time to focus on teaching when Covid-19 hit and shelter-in-place laws closed my practice for me. Shortly thereafter Paula retired with her amazing skills, experience and knowledge. When I asked her if she wanted to create ITH with me and she said yes, I knew we had the dream team. So without two external events completely out of my control, the pandemic and Paula’s retirement, I couldn’t have founded my vision for a school that helps people heal and thrive. You never know when the stars will align for you, so stay open to whatever may come.
Paula:
We had to create an online video-based school using only our savings in the middle of a pandemic, and I discovered that I could learn everything we needed from the internet for free. I found thousands of reviews and online tutorials that taught what I needed to learn about shooting and editing videos and managing a website. When we started to build ITH, I didn’t realize how much we’d be able to do ourselves thanks to the resources available online.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Suteja:
For me, the funniest mistake I made had to do with a sneeze. Some people have teeny little sneezes that sound like puppy yips, so 1 on a scale of 1–10 where 1 is the quietest sneeze on earth. Other people have booming blasts that sound like dynamite explosions, so 10 where 10 is the loudest sneeze on earth. My sneezes are 11s. When I sneeze, the cat leaps up and hightails it out of the room, and I have the scratch marks on my lap to prove it.
We were recording a video with me in front of the camera and Paula at the computer wearing headphones connected to the microphone. I felt a sneeze coming but didn’t think anything of it. I knew she could edit around it so I figured I’d just sneeze and keep going. So I sneezed.
I kept going but immediately stopped when I saw Paula yank off the headphones, her eyes the size of plates, her mouth open in a silent howl of pain. She clamped her hands over her ears in a vain attempt to massage the hurt away. I realized too late what had happened but there was nothing I could do — the damage was already done. Paula started laughing and accused me of trying to turn her deaf. I’d been holding my breath but burst out laughing, and we laughed until tears came. I promised to warn her whenever I had to sneeze and I’ve kept my word. Thankfully she’s able to snatch off her headphones every time.
Paula:
When the Covid-19 pandemic hit, I pulled out the old sewing machine and got pretty good at sewing masks. So when we started ITH and realized that Suteja would need a wardrobe in which to appear in videos, I figured I could sew it. We bought fabric, patterns and trims, and I started sewing. No classes, no experience other than masks, hadn’t sewn since high school, just chutzpah. Words fail me in describing the horror show that followed. Maybe if I had taken a class or had a sewing teacher, but covid precluded any kind of gatherings so we were stuck with the most ill-fitting monstrosities that were so bad all we could do was laugh every time Suteja tried one on.
I’ll never know how to fit an armhole or collar and Project Runway contestants are magicians as far as I’m concerned. That was an expensive mistake which we decided not to prolong. We ended up finding inexpensive tops and jackets in a variety of colors online for Suteja to wear. I’m still sewing face masks, including masks made out of left-over wardrobe fabric, but I know my limitations and have learned to stick to my lane. I prefer the ‘undo’ command to seam ripping any day.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Suteja:
First I am grateful for Paula without whom my dream of teaching wouldn’t have happened. I’m also very grateful for all my patients with whom I have a deep heart connection. They were disappointed to lose the support of their weekly sessions because of covid, but were open and flexible enough to shift to online meditation sessions to continue their healing. Many of them became the first members of ITH. I thank them for their presence, their feedback, and how they have shaped ITH.
I will be forever grateful to the ancients around the world for the legacies they have left humanity. I thank the Yogis in India for their discoveries about the subtle body, the Toltec in Mesoamerica for their amazing connection with nature, and the many other civilizations from which I draw inspiration every day for my own spiritual life and my work. And finally, I am eternally grateful for the seekers of the world who continue to ask the deep questions and look within for answers. They are building a harmonious future for humanity.
Paula:
I am grateful for Suteja who continues to keep me sane in an insane world. I’m also very grateful for the great colleagues and leaders I worked with as an employee and consultant at companies like Autodesk, DHL, Schwab, Genentech, HP, RingCentral, and many others. I met marvelous people who impressed me with their knowledge and willingness to share so I could learn. I was fortunate to design training programs with subject matter experts from other departments including Sales, Marketing, Finance, Technology, Operations, Production, R&D, and HR. This gave me a well-rounded perspective of what it takes to run a business, which has been invaluable.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
Suteja:
My answer is going to seem far-fetched but I’m a healer and I’ve seen that my patients’ identities are often built on the identities of their parents and ancestors. Through our work together they would discover hidden reservoirs of unresolved family trauma stuck in their bodies, clinging to their organs and muscles and joints, without their awareness or consent. I would work on a painful part of their body and they would get an image of something, perhaps weep, and release long-held physical pain. Later they would tell me that their images had to do with things they had vague inklings about which were whispered in the family but never openly discussed since they were taboo. By releasing their connections to their ancestors’ traumas, they healed not only their pain but the pain of their family line for generations in both directions. So I’ve recognized that we all contain bits of our ancestors psychically and physically, a recognition shared by many in the healing community.
My personal experiences are scientifically substantiated by the scholarly study of Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance, the passing on of traits from parents to children from generation to generation, including experiences of trauma. Mark Wolynn, Director of the Family Constellation Institute, explains the studies supporting TEI in his enlightening and readable book “It Didn’t Start with You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle.” Once you recognize that this is going on, my answer will make more sense.
As much as we would like to speed up the world for women founding companies, the woundings of women are so deep and have lasted so long that the impediments are still engrained in the cells and subconscious of women the world over. I’m talking about thousands of generations of women raised to question their ability to survive on their own without a male provider, of being terrified of being sexually active or having a child out of wedlock, of being seen as worthless if they couldn’t procreate, of being considered chattel and second-class citizens. My own mother told me about how her father threatened to kick her out of the family if she got pregnant before marriage, and how women in her grandmother’s generation were thrown in jail if they got pregnant without being married (based on the laws in France at the time).
The root of one’s power, according to the chakra system devised by ancient Yogis, is the first chakra where sexual organs and sexual pleasure are. Basic energetic empowerment comes from each chakra, and most women have been denied access to their own sexual pleasure and the root of their power throughout recorded history. This denial is embedded subconsciously in women, and every woman has to fight against it as she tries to rise. It’s like the chains on Marley’s ghost in “A Christmas Carol” — whether you realize it or not, chances are that your female ancestors were not free to express their sexuality or be empowered by doing so, and you’re dragging the chains of their imprisonment behind you.
The oppression of women has been going on for millennia and the rise of the women’s movement in the last half-century is a step in the right direction but a drop in the ancestral bucket. The pernicious societal trauma that every woman carries in her bones and reproductive organs will take generations to release, but we don’t have to wait. There are many ways to address ancestral trauma which is why our classes and events offer a variety of methods. As more women heal, the female wounding will be released from the collective subconscious and not carried forward.
Paula:
One of the biggest stumbling blocks for women is overlooking the very attributes in which women excel: collaboration, empathy, vulnerability, inclusion, being organized, acknowledging intuition, and learning from mistakes. I’ve found that women who express these characteristics can be very effective in the business world.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
Suteja:
On an individual level, look at your ancestry and learn all you can about what happened to those who came before you on both your mother’s and father’s sides. Even if you think they lived uneventful lives, think again. We all live through trauma and fear, and are marked by the experiences of the world around us. People living today remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, the Challenger exploded, the World Trade Center fell, and Covid-19 shut down the world. These traumatic events become embedded in our bodies and psyches, to be passed down to our children and their children just like our grandparents’ experiences in World War I and the Great Depression and World War II and the Holocaust became embedded in their bodies and psyches, and were passed down to us. You can heal intergenerational trauma by going deep into your subconscious to identify what you are carrying from the past and release it. I see it happen all the time.
Paula:
Give yourself permission to express characteristics unique to you, even if they don’t align with what the traditional business world claims to be necessary. You can be a founder without being a ruthless, dog-eat-dog, take-no-prisoners type of person. Collaboration, empathy, generosity, and intuition can go a long way in supporting your vision and making your enterprise more successful and your life more enjoyable.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders?
Suteja:
When you feel empowered, your life force is strong and pushes you to create; by creating you feel empowered. It’s a lovely symbiosis. This is reason enough to become a founder. When you are your own boss, you’re free to create as you see fit. The more you feel empowered as a human being, the more likely you’ll become a founder.
Paula:
I often used a game called Lutts and Mips to teach problem-solving and team dynamics. Eight to ten people sit in a circle in age order, with the oldest person in the first seat and the youngest in the last seat. Each person is given cards which contain clues that solve a problem the team is working on. You can’t show your cards to anyone, but people can take turns sharing one of their cards aloud with the group until all the cards have been read. The oldest person is also given a ball. But there’s rules about talking.
Only the person holding the ball may speak. The ball may only be passed from the oldest team member to the second oldest team member, and so on to the youngest member. The ball always travels in the same direction and does not skip anyone. Older team members may interrupt any younger team members at any time by taking the ball. Younger team members may not interrupt any older team members at any time. When someone finishes speaking, they pass the ball to the next younger team member and the team resumes the age-related speaking order.
Over decades using this game, in small rooms with one team to giant ballrooms with hundreds of teams, the results were always the same. The only teams who solved the problem in the allotted time were all-female teams or co-ed teams where the oldest member was a woman. Okay, maybe 5% of the time male teams solved the problem, but that was rare. And why did the women always win? Because unlike the men, the women didn’t interrupt others or snatch the ball away from younger people, and they saw to it that the ball went all the way around the circle many times, thereby ensuring that everyone shared all their cards and had equal opportunities to discuss the solution. In the male circles, the youngest members either never got the ball so they didn’t read their cards aloud, or after reading their cards aloud they never got the ball in order to contribute to the solution. When debriefing the activity there would always be young men on the male teams who had solved the problem but never got the ball so couldn’t share what they knew to win the game. This would be a shock to the other members of their team.
As far as I’m concerned, Lutts and Mips is the best reason why more women should become founders.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
Suteja:
One myth of being a founder is that you have to be a charismatic person with a strong, outgoing personality who loves human contact, shakes a lot of hands, laughs easily and loudly, and talks a lot. I’m living proof that introverts can be founders. Being introverted means that I’m comfortable spending time and energy on quiet introspection rather than noisy outward expression. I cherish time alone and am used to finding solutions inside of myself. I find that clarity comes in the empty spaces I create. What’s most important is having a vision of what you want to create, regardless of whether you’re introverted or extroverted.
Paula:
There’s a piece of paper taped to the wall of our office that says “F**k Everything! I just have a message!” We printed it after a lengthy discussion in 2020 about how impossible it would be to start a website where Suteja could share her knowledge about healing with others. There were so many problems we couldn’t see solving and so many scary things to consider given how private a person Suteja is, that we’d reached the limit of our ability to dream and were sitting in gloomy silence.
Suddenly Suteja jumped up and shouted, “F**k Everything! I just have a message!” I gasped — I’d never in twenty years seen Suteja have an outburst much less swear (merde doesn’t count), and the passion behind it was impressive. It was like she morphed from Gandhi to Xena Warrior Princess. We stared at each other then burst out laughing so hard I peed my pants. We memorialized this breakthrough with a wall sign, the first of many as it turned out.
We’re all taught a myth: that we need a business plan and funding, and that success is measured only in numbers. Don’t believe it. What you need is to be inspired, determined, and ready to last for the long haul. You need to be open to luck and serendipity. You need to be kind and generous, ethical and grounded. You need to acknowledge and address your fear. You need to define success on your own terms. And it helps if you’re smart.
Suteja and I don’t have a business plan. We didn’t look for financing. What guides our enterprise is a relentless desire to get what the ancients knew about how to live in harmony and thrive out into the world. She’s on board because she’s a conduit for healing who is driven to educate others about what she’s learned. I’m on board because I’m having fun doing what I love, instructional design, and she’s great to collaborate with. Our measures of success are if we’re enjoying ourselves and if our members are benefiting. As long as both are in place, ITH will grow. “F**ck Everything! I just have a message!” is our business plan, and we’re committed for life.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
Suteja:
I think that the most important trait of a successful founder is a sense of self. There can be an enormous amount of uncertainty and fear when you found an enterprise, and having a strong sense of self based on self-awareness and humility is the only thing that can overcome fear. Your sense of self enables you to create an enterprise that supports and sustains you so your work doesn’t take over your life and you forget to eat, sleep, and take care of yourself. As a founder, you are your enterprise, and you can’t let your enterprise kill you. Your enterprise needs to help you flourish, not drain you.
Paula:
I think the traits of curiosity and imagination tempered with acumen and pragmatism increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder. You have to be able to envision multiple possibilities for how your enterprise could grow — the more possibilities you dream the more likely one of them could happen. This is a good way to stay open to happy accidents so you don’t miss them. Of course, this has to be balanced with judgment, awareness, and sober assessments of reality including the reality that you don’t know what the future holds.
As for a “regular job,” it’s a good way to make a steady income while you gain knowledge and skills. There’s nothing wrong with holding a regular job, in fact, some of the greatest founders in the world were first employees.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Suteja:
1. The job is non-stop. There is no such thing as a weekend. Weekends have lost their meaning as a time of rest and rejuvenation. Every day you work. You dream about the enterprise in your sleep. You wake up in the middle of the night and make notes so you don’t forget ideas that come to you at odd hours. It’s like having a child — you don’t ever get to ignore the baby crying in the next room, needing your attention to grow and develop.
2. You are in a constant creative process. This can be an exhilarating experience because you’re manifesting something out of nothing. But it can also be anxiety-producing because you are relentlessly facing the unknown. You can’t fall asleep at night because you’re wondering what’s going to happen and don’t have any certainty, just hope. The trick is to get used to forging ahead even when you don’t know what’s around the next corner.
Paula:
3. You’re running a business. No matter how much time you want to spend on the creative stuff that turns you on about your enterprise, you’re going to spend a lot of time knee-deep in the muck of the back-end running the business: permits, taxes, fees, expenses, trademarks, financial reports, SEO, social media, etc. Either learn how to do this or be prepared to pay someone to do it, because no matter how good your product or service is, it’s not an enterprise without the back-end.
4. No one cares about your enterprise as much as you do. Don’t be surprised if your friends and family are not as excited as you are about your latest idea, or round of funding, or even your early successes. Ignore them. You care about your enterprise and that’s all that matters.
5. You set the deadlines; you can change them. Your sanity comes first, and if maintaining your sanity means moving back a deadline, then do it. Meeting a deadline but killing yourself (or others) in the process just isn’t worth it. Don’t let your enterprise fracture your life. Take your foot off the accelerator and coast for a while.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
Suteja:
The whole purpose of ITH is to improve people’s lives by providing them with tools for self-healing, thereby helping create a better future for humanity. I feel privileged and humbled to be doing work that makes the world a better place.
Paula:
I’ve been fortunate to teach at some great universities and at San Francisco State I was able to donate my salary to create scholarships for women over the age of forty returning to school in the College of Health and Social Sciences. Now we’re donating ITH memberships and products to non-profits and educational institutions so more people can join in doing work that makes the world a better place.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
Suteja:
I would love to see schools teach children how to deal with their emotions — how to tap into their emotions, live in tune with their emotions, get messages from their emotions, and not be trapped by their emotions. There are very simple techniques that even toddlers can do, like breathing with their abdomen, to calm themselves and relax and recharge. In ancient Japan and China everyone knew how to breathe with their abdomen because it was part of the culture. In the Western world we either never had that or forgot how to do it, but it’s a surefire way to calm oneself down, clear the mind, and develop a sustained focus. There are other self-healing techniques I wish could be taught to children at an early age and reinforced throughout life.
Paula:
According to Jessica Wapner’s article in the New Yorker Magazine, “Medicine’s Wellness Conundrum” (Nov 6. 2021), doctors and HMO’s are facing a growing number of patients suffering chronic pain or discomfort who want to include in their treatment plans alternative methods not found in the Modern Medical System such as Ayurveda, acupuncture, massage, and homeopathy, among others. Alternative treatments, which were once viewed as kooky and fringe, are now being regularly requested by patients, and have even been incorporated by a few small healthcare providers who are on the bleeding edge of integrated healing. But the vast majority of physicians in modern medicine continue to deride alternative/integrative healing, ignoring the efficacy of it, dissuading patients who request it, and refusing to refer patients to alternative practitioners. The consequences of their decisions have grave ramifications for our health and wellbeing.
When the community of people requesting alternative resources gets big enough and comes together as a movement, doctors and insurance companies will have no choice but to change. Knowing that the ‘wellness’ conversation is growing, no one should be afraid to raise the question of alternative treatments with their medical providers and healthcare insurers. You have the right to speak up for what you want to include in your healing. It’s your body, mind and spirit, and you have the power to tap into all the layers of who you are to help yourself heal.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
Suteja:
I’d love to meet Mark Wolynn, the author I mentioned earlier who writes about Transgenerational Epigenetic Inheritance in his book “It Didn’t Start With You.” I admire his work and the work of The Family Constellation Institute immensely and think we’d have a lot to talk about in relation to ancestral trauma and healing.
Paula:
I’d love to meet Molly Patrick, co-founder of the Clean Food Dirty Girl website. Her weekly newsletter is always a beacon of positivity and inspiration, and not in a saccharin way. Her messages about self-acceptance and self-love are universal and grounded in a reality that everyone can understand and relate to. She offers practical advice in the form of healthy eating and is brave enough to show her vulnerability. Plus she swears.
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Female Disruptors: Priyanka Jain and Laine Bruzek of Evvy On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Some of the best advice we ever got was “Make yourself easy to help.” If you go to someone and say, “Can I pick your brain for 30 minutes?” that’s putting all the work on them: they have to make time, set up a calendar event, take the call, follow up with you, etc.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, I had the pleasure of interviewing Priyanka Jain and Laine Bruzek.
Priyanka is the co-founder & CEO of Evvy. Before founding Evvy, Priyanka was Head of Product at pymetrics, a startup using behavioral science and AI to make talent matching more effective and fair. She hired & led a tech team of 70+ across product, data science & engineering from pre-revenue to 6 product lines and 100+ global enterprise clients. Priyanka is a spokesperson for the United Nations Foundation’s Girl Up Campaign, Chair of the Acumen Fund’s Junior Council, and on the Innovation Board for the XPRIZE Foundation. She received her B.S. from Stanford University, where she was a Mayfield Fellow and President of Stanford Women in Business.
Laine Bruzek is co-founder & Chief Marketing Officer of Evvy. She’s a creative brand builder and designer, previously at Google Creative Lab and Tribeca Enterprises, where she spearheaded initiatives across branding, marketing, emerging tech, data privacy, and product strategy. Laine received her B.S. in Product Design Engineering and M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, where she was a Mayfield Fellow.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Evvy was founded in January 2021 on the simple insight that there is so much we still don’t know about how to best care for women and people with vaginas — after all, we weren’t required to be in US clinical research until 1993.
Both of our north stars have always been: how can we better serve women where they’ve historically been overlooked, especially due to systemic bias and stigmatization?
Female health — and more specifically vaginal health — certainly checks that box.
Almost everyone with a vagina will deal with a UTI, yeast infection, BV, or another vaginal condition in their lifetime — and many of us recurrently. But cultural taboos around vaginal health mean that we often go through our care journey alone, and with deep embarrassment. Between the two of us, we’ve personally experienced recurrent infections for years, been misdiagnosed and underdiagnosed, and had our physical symptoms dismissed due to “stress.”
We built Evvy because It’s time that vaginal health, and women’s health as a whole, gets the investment it deserves on a systemic, clinical, and personal level.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
More than 30% of people with vaginas suffer from imbalances in the vaginal microbiome every year (read: bacterial vaginosis, yeast infections, and UTIs). What’s more — the latest research has uncovered groundbreaking links between the vaginal microbiome and infertility, STIs, preterm birth, gynecologic cancers, and more.
But even though the vaginal microbiome is a critical biomarker, women and people with vaginas have never had access to that information about their own bodies — until now.
Our at-home vaginal microbiome test, called the Evvy Vaginal Health Test, gives anyone with a vagina answers on what’s going on in their vaginal microbiome, why it matters to their symptoms and health, and what they can do about it. Evvy is actually the first company to leverage metagenomic sequencing in vaginal health testing. Part of our unique approach is finally bringing the best technologies to women’s health!
Evvy empowers anyone to understand their levels of protective vs. disruptive bacteria, and how those microbes are associated with vaginal symptoms — as well as broader challenges like infertility, preterm birth, STI acquisition, and more.
The Evvy team includes scientists, designers, doctors, and entrepreneurs, including a group of leading OB/GYNs and vaginal microbiome researchers with decades of experience at organizations like UCSF, Stanford, Harvard, Cleveland Clinic, and more.
Our mission is to radically reinvent how we understand and treat the female body as a whole, and inspire everyone — doctors, educators, lawmakers, researchers, and patients — to close the gender health gap for good.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
This isn’t a mistake but it’s been funny to share our vaginal health journeys with dozens of reporters and venture capitalists — many of them male! It’s one thing to talk about destigmatizing vaginal health, but we’re proud that we’ve found ways to actually put that in practice, and encouraged our community to share their stories too.
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
We fiercely admire the women we’ve spoken to who have turned traumatic experiences in the healthcare system into the foundation for becoming their own advocates. They inspire us because they’re amazing detectives and educators and communicators — but most importantly they ALWAYS come back and share their knowledge with their family & friends or in forums like Facebook groups. They always leave the community more informed than they found it. So we’re inspired to build Evvy in the same way: build better tools, research, and education but never stop turning around to give it straight back to the community.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
In healthcare, all disruption needs to be heavily grounded in science and research. One of the biggest obstacles to women getting the vaginal healthcare they need is misinformation! The internet has tons of medically misguided advice on it, in addition to the constant beauty industry narrative that vaginas should look pristine and smell like flowers.
We’ve been using our platform to debunk a lot of common misconceptions in a fun, approachable way — and to offer medically-sound insight into and support for vaginal health. We’re being disruptive in how we convey the information, but not in the information itself!
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Some of the best advice we ever got was “Make yourself easy to help.” If you go to someone and say, “Can I pick your brain for 30 minutes?” that’s putting all the work on them: they have to make time, set up a calendar event, take the call, follow up with you, etc.
For us, it has made a world of difference to do the disciplined work of identifying the concrete questions or asks we have, and reaching out with something more specific like “Hey, I’d love to be in touch with X person in your network, and I’ve included a ready-to-forward email below.” That way, others can help with a single button click! People naturally want to help if they can, and if you make it really easy it’s a win for everyone.
Second, write thank you notes. Entrepreneurship takes a village — it would be impossible to build anything from scratch without lots and lots of help along the way from mentors, investors, fellow founders, colleagues, and more. You’ll need help along the way and when people go out of their way to help you, make sure to say thank you! Even better if you hand-write the note.
Finally, remember to take care of yourself — which can sometimes get lost in the chaos of building something new. Prioritizing your mental health can be super tough as a founder but it’s extremely important!
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
For Evvy, the vaginal microbiome is just the beginning. The composition of the vaginal microbiome is responsible for common infections (like UTIs, bacterial vaginosis, and yeast infections) — but recent research has also shown that it’s associated with preterm birth, infertility, STI acquisition, and more.
As we look ahead, we’re planning to expand into other critical biomarkers, products, and services that can transform how we diagnose and treat conditions in the female body. And we’re incredibly excited to build an active community of people talking about vaginal health and other “taboo” female health topics along the way!
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
Disrupting means taking risks. In entrepreneurship, those risks often happen within a place or system where failure can have more intense negative consequences for women than their male counterparts — whether they’re social, political, physical, emotional, or financial. That said, we want women and people with vaginas to feel free to talk about their vaginal health and demand better research & care — and we’re willing to risk a lot to help make that happen!
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
Everyone should read “Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men” by Caroline Criado Pérez! It’s about the gender research gap and how the world has been built on the assumption that men are the default:
“Data is fundamental to the modern world. From economic development, to healthcare, to education and public policy, we rely on numbers to allocate resources and make crucial decisions. But because so much data fails to take into account gender, because it treats men as the default and women as atypical, bias and discrimination are baked into our systems. And women pay tremendous costs for this bias, in time, money, and often with their lives.”
Books, podcasts, and research that opened our eyes to the gender health gap are crucial to the founding story of Evvy, and we’re so grateful to authors and researchers like Pérez for laying out the issues so clearly.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
We want to start a movement based on the belief that talking about vaginal health isn’t embarrassing, gross, shameful, or something to be avoided! We’re all about destigmatizing vaginal health so we can find community with one another and learn from each other on how to lead healthier lives.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
One quote that has really resonated lately is from Marie Daly, the first African-American woman in the U.S. to earn a PhD in chemistry (she discovered the relationship between cholesterol and clogged arteries!). She said: “Courage is like — it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: you get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.”
We live by this at Evvy — you don’t need the perfect plan to start making real change in the world!
How can our readers follow you online?
If you want to discover your vaginal microbiome, check out our at-home vaginal microbiome test at evvy.com. If you want to join the movement to destigmatize vaginal health, you can follow us on Instagram (@evvybio) or check out our viral TikToks (@evvybio)!
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
True leadership does not happen in corner offices. People laugh at Dec and me because as part of our routine, we will personally deliver candy to a couple of the HEB grocery stores that we supply to. We also spend a couple of hours a week in the warehouse packing orders. Leaders can’t lead without a team, and the best way to gain the trust of your team is to show them that you are right there with them.
As a part of our series about lessons from Thriving Power Couples, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jack Bessudo and Declan Simmons from Sugarox Candy Studio.
Jack are Dec are the creators of Tamalitoz by Sugarox, an artisanal ribbon candy pillow filled with chili lime and sea salt, giving old-school candy a Mexican makeover. It all started in a tiny candy store in Mexico City making small-batch candy. The husband & husband team wanted to come up with a unique blend of flavors that represented both of them. With the tangy flavors of Mexico and traditional sweetness from Britain, Tamalitoz was born.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you two to your respective career paths?
Jack: My background is in advertising. Before taking the plunge and starting our candy business, I spent 15 years at advertising agencies. During those years, I worked my way through the agency, spent time in the account management side, transitioned to creative, and finally ended up as a Planner. Being an Account Planner is a big deal. In a role with overwhelming responsibility, you are accountable for the strategy of your client’s brand. Some of the most intelligent people I ever met were Planners. I would be in awe at how they could piece together data and deliver presentations that felt more like poetry than analytics. After many years in the role, it was clear that I was NOT that fantastic Planner. I felt like I was an ok one, but do we ever want to be just adequate? So in the words of my spirit animal, Carrie Bradshaw, “and just like that” I decided to leave advertising and start a candy business.
Declan: My background is in sales and management. I owned a fleet disposal company back in England. I never would have thought I would end up owning a candy business in the United States, but love the way my life has taken a sweet and unexpected turn.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you two got married?
The most exciting story is the story of Sugarox Candy Studio. It has brought us so much joy but also heartache, frustration, and failure. Being able to tell people how we started as a small candy shop in Mexico City, how that evolved into the development of a brand that we could export to the USA, then have that very same business in Mexico crumble due to Covid, while still venturing into the United States has been so successful of a story we often tell ourselves. For sure we will write a book about all this one day. It is also hard to separate our personal lives from the business, so most of our couple stories involve the business one way or another. People always say it’s hard to work with your significant other. But I can only imagine that being the case when the both of you are employed in the same office. In our case, there is nobody I would have preferred to do this with. Starting your own business is all-consuming; to have gone at it alone would have certainly ended our relationship, the company, or both.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
We often consider Sugarox as having two beginnings, one was when we opened in Mexico, and the other was when we opened in the United States.
As mentioned, Sugarox in Mexico began as a candy store, it was unlike any other candy store in Mexico. Of course, we sold candy, but it was made in-house where people could come in and watch our candy artisans make a batch of candy from beginning to end. They could also have candy personalized with their names or logos. It was quite an experience to visit one of our shops. But in the beginning, we were still learning the ropes and we made many mistakes. The thing with candy is it is very temperamental; the slightest mistake will cause your batch of candy to crystalize, halting the process to a grinding stop. I was horrified and embarrassed when this happened, I wanted to give our customers a show, but when you ruin a batch of candy, it feels like you wasted their time. In time you make fewer mistakes and ruin less candy. Occasionally though, it would happen, but in time, it served as a gentle reminder of how delicate the process is. When it would happen, I would take the opportunity to show customers how the slightest error can make us destroy a 20 lb batch of candy. This made our customers realize how much attention to detail is involved in candy making and helped justify our premium price tag. In advertising, we would often approach a negative situation and see if we could turn that negative into a positive. Lesson learned.
When we started Sugarox in the USA, it was more like a distribution and sales operation. The candy was being produced by Sugarox Mexico, and Sugarox USA was selling it. But running a business and being in Mexico is impossible. So to make this happen we needed a sales team. As a small business, we could not afford to hire a sales team, so we started working with brokers. No offense to brokers, I am sure there are some wonderful ones out there, but thewhole broker thing was not working for us. Thinking we could operate our business from Mexico was our first big mistake. We had to find a way to get to the USA. We knew we had to speak with a lawyer and find a way to get both Dec and myself to the States to help get things really moving.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
When everyone strives for automatization and technology, where efficiency and the bottom line are kings, we take a different approach. Tamalitoz, the brand we launched in the USA, consists of ribbon candy pillows made almost exactly as centuries ago in Europe, but we gave it a fabulous Mexican makeover. Each batch of Tamalitoz is hand-formed; the machine we use today to cut the Tamalitoz into their characteristic shape resembling a tiny tamale is the same machine we had in our first candy store in Mexico. We love that Tamalitoz looks and feels like something made 200 years ago in England. For us, candy making is an art, and although we now work with a co-packer, we made sure that our production is still hand-crafted. We embrace the imperfection of each candy, they are never uniform in shape or color, and we love that about Tamalitoz.
Are you working on any exciting new projects now? How do you think that will help people?
We are working on something exciting! We are developing an organic low-sugar version of Tamalitoz but with a twist. We won’t go into that much detail as it’s still a work in progress, but we are developing a line extension of Tamalitoz using organic tapioca fiber. We are still perfecting the flavor and consistency, but bringing Tamalitoz to a group of people concerned with their sugar consumption is very exciting.
What advice would you give to other CEOs or founders to help their employees to thrive?
I am not sure I feel confident enough to give other CEOs advice; I still feel like I am at the taking advice stage lol. But I feel you always get the most from your team when they feel empowered, when they feel safe. They have to know that you are there to help them because you acknowledge that you need them much more than they need you.
How do you define “Leadership”?
True leadership does not happen in corner offices. People laugh at Dec and me because as part of our routine, we will personally deliver candy to a couple of the HEB grocery stores that we supply to. We also spend a couple of hours a week in the warehouse packing orders. Leaders can’t lead without a team, and the best way to gain the trust of your team is to show them that you are right there with them.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
So picture this, Dec and I are getting ready for day two of the Sweets and Snacks show. That is the big candy expo that takes place in Chicago. So we have our booth, getting ready to start the second day of the show. You have to be on top of your game, pitching your product to whoever passes by because that’s where all the big retailers go to scout new products. It’s a very fun show, but high stakes and high stress. So as we are getting ready to start day two, we get a call from our customs broker (see at the time we were still producing Tamalitoz ourselves down in Mexico City). So we got the call from the broker, and she said, “Guys remember a couple of weeks ago the FDA came in and took some samples of your latest shipment, well the results of the samples came in, and they are putting your latest shipment on hold because they found a coloring that is not listed on the ingredients panel.” This was a huge problem, as 100% of this product had already been spoken for, and we were going to have to let our customers know that there is an issue with their candy. Then we started thinking about what could have possibly gone wrong that they found a color that was not listed. It’s important to mention that when we developed Tamalitoz, it was important to me that we only use natural colors and flavors. The FDA had found an artificial color yellow in our candy. Initially, I thought that our color manufacturer sold us the wrong color and was getting ready to call our lawyer. To say that we started that day on the wrong foot was an understatement. Later on in the evening, I get an email from a very angry customer saying that her child had almost choked on the silica pouch that was in the bag and she herself was considering taking legal action against us. The next morning at the show, trying to keep a smile on when all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and cry, a lady came up to the booth and asked me about Tamalitoz. She was interested in knowing about our process and was shocked that we were manufacturing the candy ourselves. It turned out she is a co-packer and told us that when we were ready, she could help us with production and let us focus on building the business. It was like she was sent from the candy gods to come and save the day. Long story short, we get back to Mexico to find out what happened with our coloring debacle. It turned out our production manager had run out of yellow color, and when our supplier told him they had none in stock until the next week, he went to one of our candy stores and asked them for yellow color. In his mind, he was solving a problem, and he never expected that the FDA or anyone would find out. After finding out what happened, we called the lady who introduced herself at the show, and we set everything in motion to transition production over to her. It is important to mention that at the time we could not afford to work with a co-packer. They have minimum production runs and had we agreed to do a minimum run, that would have drained our bank account. She heard our story, and she told us that she believes in us and our candy. She offered to produce the first run and sell it to us as we needed it. What she did at that moment would be a game-changer for us, she truly was sent to us by the candy gods and had it not been for her, we would not be here today.
How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?
I tell people all the time that we don’t sell candy; we sell joy, excitement, and flavor. So just by being out there, we bring good to the world in one way or another. But one day, we got an email from a customer writing to thank us for making Tamalitoz. It wasn’t the first time we got an email from a fan, but this time it was different. She went on to say that she is battling cancer, and the chemotherapy makes it very hard for her to keep anything down, but she found Tamalitoz, and it’s the one thing that settles her stomach. We kept in touch and sent her a ton of Tamalitoz to help get her through her treatment. She told us how she had shared some of the candy with the nurses in oncology, and they all loved it. This happened right at the start of covid when we were all terrified and things shut down. I asked her to find out where we could send some cases to the nurses to thank them for being there on the front line. We sent enough candy to give to all the staff at the hospital Tamalitoz. It is the least we could do. The world was entering a terrifying moment and the people working in hospitals became our heroes. It would be an honor to bring some joy to them.
What are the “5 Things You Need To Thrive As A Couple”? Please share a story or example for each.
Patience- Keeping an open heart and mind with each other.
Vision- Both know where the goals are and where you are heading.
Determination- Be determined to reach your goals together.
Trust- Know that your partner will make the right decision and support them.
Sense Of Humor- Make it fun!
See more in the video! 🙂
You are people of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
Embrace your sweet and spicy! I think there is beauty in duality, we condition ourselves to be one thing or another, but we struggle with being two things at once. Tamalitoz is sweet and spicy; wouldn’t it be great to champion our own personal sweet and spicy. We could end toxic versions of naughty and nice and embrace our naughty and nice. It is what makes us who we are. Find joy in finding out you are not one or the other, but both.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
There are so many, but honestly, if I had to choose one, it would be the Golden Rule. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” I am not a religious person, but I do feel that by being kind and patient with other people, it makes your day flow better.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
So for the last month or so at our house, we have either Brandi Carlile or Sam Smith playing, and there is this one Brandi Carlile song where both her and Sam sing. It’s called Party of One and is musical heaven. So, so pretty and heartfelt. I will be greedy and say I want both of them over for breakfast. To spend time with creative people whose work you admire is always a joy. But to do it with people who you think would be fun to hang out with is a dream.
How can our readers follow your work online?
Follow us on Instagram @tamalitozusa and facebook.com/tamalitoz
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
Listen to your gut: Your intuition is always right, even if several people are telling you otherwise, go with what you truly feel.
As a part of our series about “Why We Need More Women Founders”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Alexa Persico.
After over a decade of knowledge and expertise, makeup artist, Alexa Persico is the founder and developer behind Alexa Persico Cosmetics Beauty Brand. Working as a Freelance Makeup Artist, Persico always knew she could build a career out of her passion for beauty. At just seventeen years old this inspired Alexa to follow her dream and develop her namesake brand, Alexa Persico Cosmetics. Since the brand’s inception in 2012, she has launched many hit products that grabbed the attention of beauty lovers + celebrities worldwide. Including the hit Brighten Me Baby Highlighter that since its initial release, the palette sold out within hours several times, has been the driving force behind the brand’s popularity and a fan-favorite in the beauty community.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
Makeup has been a passion of mine since I was a little girl, I’ve always loved making people feel beautiful I remember being 12 and saying to my Mom “When I get older I really want to be a makeup artist and start my own makeup line” When I was around 16 I started working professionally as a makeup artist and actually built up a clientèle which was incredible for someone so young. I loved being a Freelance Makeup Artist but I knew I had to get serious and follow my other passion, which was developing this line. I started to sketch out packaging ideas on paper and mixed lipsticks together to find a different shade. The same sketches I had on that paper years ago are the exact logo you still see on our packaging now.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began leading your company?
It isn’t a particular story, but more of seeing the growth within my brand happening through social media. Instagram in particular. We have grown our page to over 700,000 followers along with an amazing customer base to top it off — just based on that app alone. It has been amazing seeing the growth of our social media in general over the last 10 years since starting APC.
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that? I wouldn’t say it was a mistake, more of a reality of how time-consuming creating a product is. When I first started my line I didn’t realize that a product can take a year or more from inception to launch that process alone requires a lot of back and forth with labs and can be very time-consuming. I remember when I went to my first lab meeting starting the creation of our Lip Velour™ Gloss, and my chemist at the time informed me it would take 8 months for the formula to be completed. I remember how shocked I was because I had planned to launch the product the next month. I definitely laugh thinking back to that time now, setting realistic expectations has been a huge lesson in business for me. Great things take time and it’s a process but so worth it in the end!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
When I began this journey I was about to graduate high school. I knew from a young age I wanted to own a cosmetic line and my parents never doubted my ability to make that dream come true, they took me to every lab meeting in the beginning and never gave up on me. My husband has also been a huge support system for me and does a lot of the financial side of the business while I stick to the creative. My Family & Husband are without a doubt my biggest support system.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this EY report, only about 20 percent of funded companies have women founders. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women to create companies. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from founding companies?
Well, It’s a big financial risk to start a business so of course there is fear involved in that decision. When you own your own business there is a lot of “unknown” so naturally, you have times where you think negatively and worry about every little thing. My dad always said “99 percent of what you worry about never happens”- and it’s true, most of the time the worst possible outcomes you fear usually never happen, and if that 1 percent does happen it’s usually not as bad as you thought. Also, I think there probably isn’t enough funding for women-owned businesses from large venture capital groups which is hindering women from starting because they simply don’t have the initial funds to start.
Can you help articulate a few things that can be done as individuals, as a society, or by the government, to help overcome those obstacles?
Offering more funding for women-owned businesses would be a start because it doesn’t seem like there is enough. Also, one thing I love doing daily is listening to female founder podcasts and hearing success stories of other women who were able to make their dreams come true. I think when women hear other women talking about their road to success it pushes them to not give up.
This might be intuitive to you as a woman founder but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become founders? Women are amazing creative thinkers and bosses. All these qualities are important in launching and running a business. I think that female founders typically have more compassion and understanding which gives them a greater ability to bring a team together toward a common goal. Also, more women founders would spark further inspiration to women who may not have considered the possibility of starting their own companies.
What are the “myths” that you would like to dispel about being a founder? Can you explain what you mean?
It’s not as “glamorous” as it’s portrayed. Success does not happen overnight. There will be days when you wish you could press pause on the clock, but you can’t because there are always things to do and people to respond to. Remember, dreams don’t work unless you do.
Is everyone cut out to be a founder? In your opinion, which specific traits increase the likelihood that a person will be a successful founder and what type of person should perhaps seek a “regular job” as an employee? Can you explain what you mean?
Not everyone is cut out to be a founder/business owner. It requires certain personality traits like being okay with failing and having thick skin. Not everyone has those traits or wants to put themselves through that which is okay. In most jobs, you can leave the work behind when you go home, as an entrepreneur your work is never “done” for the day, it’s still on your mind 24/7.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why? (Please share a story or example for each.)
Feel The Fear and do it anyway: Don’t let fear of failure stop you from achieving your goal.
Listen to your gut: Your intuition is always right, even if several people are telling you otherwise, go with what you truly feel.
Don’t Rush Things: Over the last 10 years, I’ve found that rushing a project never turns out well. Take your time, and the outcome will be better.
Learn to say NO: Simple as that, not every opportunity is for you, if one door closes another will open.
Be Present: Don’t look too far into the future, focus on the present moment, and get done what needs to be done today.
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
Being an online-based business we are able to reach such a huge demographic. I would hope the products we create are making a difference in our customers’ lives, just by helping them feel more confident. Something as small as applying lipstick before leaving the house can put you in a positive mood for the day because you feel good, and that alone can make a difference in someone’s life.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
I would love to see more people embrace their inner beauty. Sometimes we are so brainwashed by what we see on social media, I think sometimes we need to stop and realize that most of what is perceived as “perfect” is actually photo-shopped. Everyone has imperfections even though it may not seem that way through a camera lens. Embrace your inner beauty and love who you are.
We are very blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.
I’ve always been inspired by Bobbi Brown since I was a little girl. She has always been my inspiration and I love her story to success, she truly is an icon in the beauty world. If I ever had the privilege to sit and have lunch with her that would be a dream come true!
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
Women In Wellness: Dr Ahmad Nooristani of Balance7 On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Daily exercise: No matter what kind of lifestyle you have, doing active walking, going to the gym, or any other physical activity that keeps your heart rate up will make you better fit cardiovascularly. Most of my patients who suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease have shown significant mental and physical improvement with being active. Exercise improves your blood pressure and sugar levels, and allows you to decrease or in some cases completely stop some of your medications.
As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Nooristani.
CEO of Balance7™, Dr. Ahmad Nooristani is a licensed medical doctor with 16 years of experience practicing medicine. He has been involved in recent breakthrough research in the field of alternative medicine, enabling patients the opportunity to enjoy solutions that were not available until now. Working closely with so many patients every day has motivated him to broaden research in finding a new path to healing what modern medicine has not accomplished.
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 am Dr. Ahmad Nooristani, CEO of Balance7 and a licensed medical doctor with 15 years of experience practicing medicine. In order for me to understand the practice of medicine, not only from standpoint of medications but also from a comprehensive and complete end-to-end practice, I embarked on a journey that very few people to almost none had done before. The practice of medicine by itself is challenging and can take every ounce of your energy. Understanding everything about the art of medicine is a daunting task. I started my journey by being involved in various projects so I could understand what goes on with my patients from the time they walk in through the hospital door until they pass away.
The challenges they are facing are absolutely mind-boggling, yet very few of us understand that. I started working as a hospitalist and soon got involved with outpatient practice, working in nursing homes, assisted living facilities, hospice, pharmaceuticals, and research. However, I knew it was not enough. Something was missing in my approach up until I start working in the field of alternative medicine. Now, I can say I have done end-to-end medicine.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
After being in practice for a year, I realized there were so many uninsured patients who have not seen a physician in years due to lack of insurance and now they are suffering from heart attacks, strokes, cancers, etc. In response, I did what I thought was the right thing to do and created a free medical clinic (Slonoorfoundation.org and recently, Saviehealth.org) for those who are uninsured free of charge. It took me two years to get it up and running. It was extremely frustrating and there were times that I would want to drop it completely, and then I would remember my patients in need and the impact of not having resources for their healthcare needs.
Those thoughts continued to motivate me to finish, and now we are seeing thousands of patients free of charge and delivering millions of dollars of free services to those who would otherwise go without care. I learned that no matter what the challenges and obstacles are, you cannot be deterred from them. Look at the obstacles as opportunities and the challenges as personal growth potential.
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?
I was in the process of creating a medical device that would have made a significant impact on the way we obtain health information in a much more simplified way. I spent a significant amount of time and money for four years until I had the prototype and was ready to get it out to the world, but then I became busy and got side tracted and lost the drive to get it back on the market. Fast forward 8 years, now a majority of what was an idea has become a reality and I missed the opportunity to be the first. I am pretty sure I would have been in a completely different financial position if I had not been destructed. After that, I promised myself that I would finish what I start no matter what.
When it comes to health and wellness how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
As a physician working at the hospital, I am saving lives on a daily basis, but it’s such a small platform that the impact does not translate to a larger audience. How can I transform millions of lives? By being involved with Balance7 and creating a transformational supplement along with educating everyone on the pathophysiology of disease and giving solutions to them that wasn’t available until now.
Creating a healthy mindset and creating health awareness will have a lasting impact. There is no magic bullet to health. You have to be a willing participant in your own care. You must have an open mind and research all the time so you can become more aware of what is available to you.
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.
Daily exercise: No matter what kind of lifestyle you have, doing active walking, going to the gym, or any other physical activity that keeps your heart rate up will make you better fit cardiovascularly. Most of my patients who suffer from diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease have shown significant mental and physical improvement with being active. Exercise improves your blood pressure and sugar levels, and allows you to decrease or in some cases completely stop some of your medications.
Eating right: It is not about what you eat, it is about how much of what you eat and then what you eat. You can eat salad all day long and still gain weight. Count your Calories. Weight loss happens when there is a negative balance between calories going in and going out. All of the extra calories are stored as fats.
Add fruits and vegetables and decrease your meat intake: Transforming your body to become more alkaline has a significant impact on your overall health. When you combine that with the Balance7 dietary supplement, you will see a lifetime health transformation.
Avoid drinking sodas: Due to their high sugar content and their contribution to the acidic load in the body, drinking soda puts your body in danger of having a decreased immune system. You will also be at a higher risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancers.
Avoid eating processed food: All processed food contains tons of added sugar and other ingredients that are harmful to your health and has long-lasting effects if you continue to consume them.
If you start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
The movement of responsibility. No one can change you but you. Now one can give you the gift of health but you. No one is going to watch you but you. No one but you can transform you. You are responsible for you. You and only you have a choice to lead a healthier life.
What are your 5 things I wish someone told me before I started and why?
That is a tricky question. If I knew all the shortcomings and mistakes ahead of time, my learning curve wouldn’t have been so steep. Failure leads to success and beyond. What I mean is if someone told me that I should do my due diligence before embarking on a project (while that is great advice), I wouldn’t know what that means. You can’t do your due diligence unless you know what to look for, and you can’t look for something that you have no understanding of. Mistakes make us who we are but only if we learn from them. I have mixed feelings about this one.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you and why?
They are all extremely important topics and it’s hard to pick one over the other. Being a physician, mental health for me is at the forefront of choices. About 19% of adults, which is equivalent to over 47 million Americans, areexperiencing mental illness. Another 4.55% are experiencing a severe mental illness. Mental Health has become more of an issue over the past few years due to the lack of healthcare providers.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, mental health challenges were the leading cause of disability and poor life outcomes in young people, with 25% of children ages 3–17 having a mental, emotional, developmental, or behavioral disorder. About 19% of high school students have suicidal ideation. That number has increased to 36% since COVID started according to the US Surgeon General.
What is the best way our readers can follow you online?
Visit Balance7.com. Go to the “Ask the Doctor” page for any questions. Also, look for tips and articles on Yahoo news.
Women In Wellness: Jaclyn Downs of Functional Nutrigenomics On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People ’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Anything that brings enjoyment while getting you moving is critical for health! You can find all kinds of workouts on YouTube, even 3-minute ones. Three minutes is better than no minutes! Finding a physical activity that you love to do outside will be even better because you are getting sunshine and fresh air. I love bicycling and roller skating on trails and ramps!
As a part of our series about “5 Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jaclyn Downs.
Jaclyn Downs is a Functional/Genetic Nutritionist that specializes in reproductive health and addressing root causes of infertility. She is the author of the upcoming book, “Solving ‘Unexplained’ Infertility: Your 12 Week Functional Fertility Plan.” Her website is JaclynDowns.com
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you share with us the story about how you first got involved in fitness and wellness?
My father has been in the nutrition industry since I was in elementary school. The things he told me about nutrition just made sense to me, and I learned at a young age that diet and lifestyle choices are what create health and happiness. As a young adult, I knew I wanted to work with helping people, educating them on how to upgrade their diet and lifestyle choices to achieve their health goals. It’s been an evolutionary process to get to where I am today, but since that time as a young adult, I went on to become a certified yoga instructor, become a health coach, attend grad school for a Master’s degree in Holistic Nutrition, and get certified in Nutrigenomics.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?
I had a client that had been trying to get pregnant for a few years, even having gone through two sessions of assisted reproductive therapies prior to meeting with me. After a few sessions, I had her do a 5-day food log. She was already mostly gluten free because she noticed when she ate gluten, she experienced some discomfort and imbalance. I noticed that she ate dairy freely and frequently. I discussed with her that a high incidence of people that are sensitive to the proteins in gluten are also sensitive to proteins in dairy, as the immune system can react similarly to them since they are similar in molecular structure (the scientific term is ‘molecular mimicry’). She said she had done a 30-day dairy elimination challenge in the past and did not notice anything. She still decided to do two tests that would be indicative of immune system reactivity to both wheat and dairy (called Wheat Zoomer and Dairy Zoomer tests). Her Wheat Zoomer test came back indicating a moderate reactivity to various components of gluten, which was not surprising. The Dairy Zoomer showed extremely high levels of reactivity to multiple components of dairy across the board (with the maximum amount in quite a few markers). Dairy was lighting her up with inflammation every time she ate it! Her reactivity was systemic, which is why she never noticed symptoms, like GI disturbance or issues with the skin or sinuses. This test was so very interesting and revealed a major source of fertility-derailing inflammation that may have otherwise gone unnoticed! This reinforced my philosophy of “test, don’t guess.”
Can you share a story with us about the most humorous mistake you made when you were first starting? What lesson or take-away did you learn from that?
At my brick-and-mortar office in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, we have a large percentage of clients from the Plain community (Amish, Mennonite, etc.). Most of these people do not use computers, and word of mouth is their internet. As a complimentary service to our in-house clients, people are able to bring in their first morning urine and saliva samples to be analyzed. Our trained office staff tests these to monitor things like pH, or to know if someone may be spilling things like glucose, ketones, blood, or protein in their urine (via a simple dipstick, nothing fancy, nothing diagnostic).
I had a new client call in to my office, inquiring about bringing samples. She asked whether she should bring her husband’s samples in. My staff asked why since he was not a client. She said so that we could test his sample to see if we could find any reason why they weren’t getting pregnant. Someone in her community must have told her that I work with people experiencing fertility challenges and mentioned taking samples into the office. But my office does not handle THOSE KIND OF SAMPLES!!
I quickly learned to have my office be loud and clear about those samples being urine and saliva samples, and only those kinds of samples were ever to be brought in!
Can you share with our readers a bit about why you are an authority in the fitness and wellness field? In your opinion, what is your unique contribution to the world of wellness?
As I said, I’ve been interested in the wellness field since I was a child (I am currently 43 years old). I’ve seen health and diet trends come and go, and with them, learned what the strengths and weaknesses of those trends were. I was blessed to be introduced to epigenetics and nutrigenomics, as well as functional nutrition, when they were relatively new and unknown by most people. These are the cutting-edge modalities that create true health by addressing root causes, rather than merely providing a “band-aid” for the symptoms. Through utilizing functional lab testing, genetics, and a super detailed case history, I am able to understand each of my clients’ biochemistries and effectively personalize and tailor their protocols for success.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
Aside from my husband’s support for wanting me to pursue my passions, I would have to say my two colleagues, Robert Miller and Emily Givler. Because of their brilliant minds and passion for research, they have been instrumental in the knowledge that I have to share with clients and therefore play a big part in my confidence as a practitioner. A quick story about this success is due to their cutting-edge research and findings on nutrigenomics, they have spoken at many large conferences where lots of internationally renowned doctors and authors speak and attend. I was able to meet many of these people, one of which was cardiologist Dr. Stephen Sinatra. When I was needing beta-readers for my book, I reached out to him, and he was more than happy to beta-read it. He absolutely loved the book, gave me a few suggestions, and wrote me an incredible review that I am free to use on the cover and with marketing!
Ok thank you for all that. Now let’s move to the main focus of our interview. We all know that it’s important to eat more vegetables, eat less sugar, exercise more, and get better sleep etc. But while we know it intellectually, it’s often difficult to put it into practice and make it a part of our daily habits. In your opinion what are the 3 main blockages that prevent us from taking the information that we all know, and integrating it into our lives?
Deeply ingrained beliefs of not being worthy. This comes in the forms of self-sabotage and lack of willpower. This can create habitual behaviors that are so very hard to rise above because they’ve been a part of someone for so many years, even generations.
Not creating boundaries. This can lead to ‘being a martyr’ that puts everyone else’s needs before their own, not leaving any time for cooking nourishing meals or moving the body in a loving way. This ties into convenience being, in my opinion, the downfall of our health and environment. When you “don’t have time,” you reach for convenience foods and products that are highly processed, devoid of nutrients, and often laden with toxins and hormone-disrupting, earth-polluting plastic.
Information overload. There is a bewildering array of information on every topic these days, especially around the topic of nutrition and health. You can find information that is in direct opposition to something that makes sense, which somehow also makes total sense. Additionally, much of the information that gets the most exposure is put out by wealthy entities, or organizations that front for them, that just want to push their product or agenda. This makes it hard to know what is truly good for us. Spoiler: There is no one right food, supplement, diet, or form of exercise that works for everyone. This is where true self-care comes into play: investing in yourself and talking to a practitioner or professional that is going to see you as an individual case and tailor to what your needs are, rather than trying to fit a boxed protocol on you because it worked for lots of other people.
Can you please share your “5 Non-Intuitive Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Dramatically Improve One’s Wellbeing”? (Please share a story or an example for each, and feel free to share ideas for mental, emotional and physical health.)
Even though I specialize in epigenetics and creating individualized protocols, there are foundational things that people can/must do for health that are beneficial for everybody, despite what their genes say. Most of them are inexpensive or completely free! A few of these universal, key actions to implement are:
Get Outside! Our bodies require sunshine and to be connected to the earth! You would think this one would be intuitive for us humans that evolved living outside most of the day, but somewhere along the way in very, very recent history, that’s gotten lost.
Sunlight — We are solar-powered beings designed to thrive on sunshine! We evolved to wake with the sun and be outside much of the time. The skin, the largest organ of the body, requires sunshine for health. But the skin is not the only part of our bodies that greatly reacts to the sun’s rays. The retinas in our eyes are photosensitive and connect directly to various parts of the brain, activating many biochemical and biophysical reactions in the body, including adrenal function, hormone production and secretion, and regulating our circadian rhythm. Our bodies had known what time it was long before clocks and watches, and our bodies depend on this innate sensing for optimal health.
Earthing — Also known as ‘grounding,’ this is something that can be done at the same time as getting sunshine. Humans have spent most of their time on earth, literally grounded on the earth.We slept on the earth and our feet were directly on the earth, exposed to good microbes (the largest pores on our bodies are on the bottoms of our feet). It makes sense that being so close to nature is what grounds us, both literally and figuratively. This is not just a topic that only crunchy hippies endorse. There are articles in scientific journals on the benefits of ‘grounding (earthing).’ These papers show that grounding reduces stress, anxiety, depression, pain, and inflammation.
2. Setting boundaries — I mentioned this in the section above, but it is so important I wanted to unpack it a bit more. We can’t just ‘avoid stress’ like many blogs and articles say to do. But we can learn how to say no to things that are stretching us too thin or that we just plain don’t really want to do.
3. Support and tone the vagus nerve — The vagus nerve is often referred to as the “gut-brain superhighway.” It connects the brain to the gut/microbiome and internal organs (and vice versa) and regulates nearly every major organ in between. The vagus nerve is a primary part of the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) that regulates involuntary bodily functions and stimulates the “rest, digest and repair” (also called “feed and breed”) states that occur when the body is at rest and in a stress-free state. Stimulating the vagus nerve to improve vagal tone has shown to provide numerous health benefits, like improving digestion and lowering blood pressure and heart rate. In fact, the FDA has approved vagus nerve stimulation for therapeutic use in chronic inflammatory and autoimmune conditions due to its anti-inflammatory properties.
Here are some easy ways to stimulate the vagus nerve, which I’ve taken from a section in my book:
Gargle until your eyes water, which is the cue that the vagus nerve has been stimulated. Gargling contracts muscles in the back of the throat, which activates the vagus nerve. Put a sticky note on your mirror by your toothbrush to remind yourself to get into this habit.
Sing or hum loudly — again, this activates the muscles in the back of the throat. Also, humming (or saying “Om”) causes vibration around the ear, where branches of the vagus nerve run through.
Cold exposure — anything from cryotherapy to splashing cold water on your face. One practice that you can ease into is ending your shower by turning the faucet to the coldest setting before getting out. Ideally work your way up to a full 3 minutes or longer! Even if you have to start with 3 seconds, that will still provide benefits and is better than not doing the cold water at all.
4. Mindful breathing balances your autonomic nervous system (the balance between ‘fight or flight’ and ‘rest and digest’) If you are not breathing into all lobes of your lungs, you are mildly asphyxiating yourself. When I used to teach yoga, I invited people to be mindful of their breath, both on and off the mat. I would say “We can live weeks without food, days without water, but only a few minutes without air. That’s how important it is.” Give your cells the gift of oxygen! Stand tall, lengthening the spine, energizing your shoulder blades down towards your tailbone. This posture allows for more air to oxygenate your blood and cells. The easiest breath you can do to balance your ANS is to focus on having a longer exhale than inhale, and then holding the exhale for a moment before inhaling. You can also do a quick internet search for some other mindful breathing techniques for relaxation, such as Ujjayi breath/ocean breath, box breathing, and alternate nostril breathing.
5. Epsom salt soaks — most people only are aware of the benefits of Epsom salt soaks due to the magnesium component, but Epsom salts are magnesium sulfate. While magnesium is my favorite mineral and is essential for many functions in the body, sulfate is a molecule that is critical to our health! It aids in the detoxification of drugs (including acetaminophen), mycotoxins (toxins from mold), thyroid hormones, food additives, and heavy metals. Cholesterol, hormones, neurotransmitters, and vitamin D, along with many other vitamins, must be sulfated for transport in the blood. I love that something so plain and inexpensive can be so incredibly beneficial to our health! If you are not a bath-taker, doing a foot soak is good enough!
As an expert, this might be obvious to you, but I think it would be instructive to articulate this for the public. Aside from weight loss, what are 3 benefits of daily exercise? Can you explain?
Stress reduction — Exercise allows us to release stress from our physical bodies (as well as oxygenate them), and the endorphins it releases help us to feel better mentally and emotionally.
Lymphatic flow — The lymphatic system is like our body’s sewer system. It collects waste, toxins, dead/damaged cells, and cellular debris that the body wants to get rid of. It also plays an integral role in immune system function as well as maintaining fluid balance. Since the lymphatic system does not have a pump like the circulatory system does, to move lymph, we need to either move our bodies and contract our muscles, or else do manual lymphatic massage techniques. Lymph is a watery fluid, composed of lymphocytes (a type of white blood cell) and exists in the fluid surrounding cells. If lymphatic fluid is moving well, it will transport toxins and cellular waste to lymph nodes for destruction.
Cardiovascular health — Just like all the other muscles in the body, the heart is a muscle that needs to be worked. When we get the heart pumping, oxygenated blood more easily flows throughout the body and nourishes cells. This can help create healthy blood pressure, healthier resting heart rate, and decrease chances of stroke. Increased blood flow to the brain improves memory and thinking ability, as well as combatting neurodegeneration.
For someone who is looking to add exercise to their daily routine, which 3 exercises would you recommend that are absolutely critical?
Stretching keeps the muscles flexible and healthy, which allows us to maintain healthy range of motion in the joints. If the muscles aren’t strong and flexible enough to support the joints, this can lead to joint injury. Stretching will also help to prevent injury from sudden or excessive movement.
Strengthening muscles provides numerous benefits and doesn’t have to involve weights. It can be your own body weight resistance. Everyone knows that strengthening the muscles will improve muscle mass. When we build muscle, this increases metabolic rate and therefore burns more calories. Strength training exercises also create flexible joints and stronger bones. Weight-bearing exercises put a temporary stress on your bones, which sends the message to them to get stronger. Another awesome benefit to strengthening muscles is that it increases insulin sensitivity and encourages healthy blood sugar levels. This is because when we use muscle, glucose moves from the blood into the muscle cells.
Anything that brings enjoyment while getting you moving is critical for health! You can find all kinds of workouts on YouTube, even 3-minute ones. Three minutes is better than no minutes! Finding a physical activity that you love to do outside will be even better because you are getting sunshine and fresh air. I love bicycling and roller skating on trails and ramps!
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story?
Writing my soon-to-be published book, “Solving ‘Unexplained’ Infertility: Your 12 Week Functional Fertility Plan,” has actually impacted me far more than I would have originally thought. I’m not a patient person and I have always been hasty with all things, especially things that I am excited about. But you can’t create an impactful, educational, and engaging book in a hasty manner! I started writing my book about three years ago, which had a couple large interruptions, like moving homes and getting cancer (and beating it). It has forced me to be methodic, thorough, and patient with the process.
You are a person of enormous influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I am going to give a similar answer that I gave to this question in my “I Survived Cancer and Here Is How I Did It” interview with Medium.com, and that is to be able to inspire change in the corporations and companies that are creating cancer causing materials and toxic waste.
While I teach my clients to upgrade their purchasing choices for food, water, air, home and body care products to limit the plethora of health-deteriorating toxins they contain, this is really only like throwing pebbles into a pond; it creates ripples, but no real change unless it’s done consistently by many people. I would love to be able to get the powerful corporations and companies to empathetically understand that their products have been making people (and the environment) sick and/or causing death and be able to get them to re-evaluate their purpose.
I’m thrilled that organic and “eco-friendly” products are becoming more popular (although, so is “greenwashing”), and that our consumer purchasing power has the ability to cause a company to change, but I would love to be able to inspire these companies to take more initiative instead of following purchasing trends. With their financial power and media influence, they could create change on a much faster and far larger scale.
Additionally, I’d get them to see the long term picture of their current model; if we continue to “shit in our nest,” our earth will not be habitable, and their profits are going to sharply drop as the population the drops (or cancer bills increase).
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life?
“It is impossible to feel grateful and depressed in the same breath.” While everyone gets down on things from time to time, I have been blessed to not have experienced long-term depression, and it may be due to holding this quote very close. Whatever may be challenging or depressing in my life, I know that there are millions of people that would jump at the chance to trade “problems” with me. Although I have seen people struggle to come up with even one thing they are thankful for, most people stick with the big ones, like health, family, and home. I could go on and on about how grateful I am to be able to speak, see, hold a job, have functioning legs, ride a bike, have a bike to ride, sleep on a bed (and one with sheets!), read, have the social ability to have friends, hear the cicadas on a hot summer day, go to a grocery store whenever I want to, have water at the turn of a knob (and access to filters), and be able to make the hundreds of small choices I unconsciously and consciously make each and every day.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂
Woody Harrelson. He is using his status to inspire people to create a better earth. If the earth is laden with toxins, all living beings will receive those toxins. Many of these toxins are known endocrine disrupting chemicals (intersex/hermaphrodite frogs are not uncommon these days) and cancer-causing agents that are in our food, water, and air. Woody’s been doing eco-activism since before it was “cool.” I liked him on cheers as an actor and hunky celebrity, but once I learned about his activism with Earth First!, I was smitten. Then to find out that he was an avid yogi and cyclist like myself, how could he not be at the top of my list of people I’d like to have a meal with?
What is the best way our readers can follow you online?
Instagram- @FunctionalFertilitySolutions
Website — JaclynDowns.com
My book, Solving ‘Unexplained’ Infertility: Your 12 Week Functional Fertility Plan, is currently about to go into publication stage. It will be available for purchase digitally and hard copy, as well as audio versions.
