Women In Wellness: Patricia Ryan of Wonderfeel on the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Keep learning — When it comes to learning new things and brain health, the old adage “use it or lose it,” sums it up best. Continuing to challenge your brain by learning new skills or knowledge is one of the best ways to prevent your brain from aging. The best way to keep your brain healthy and your mind active is to tap into your curiosity and explore topics, lessons and skills that interest you while flexing your brain.
As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Patricia Ryan.
Patricia is the Co-Founder and Chief Wonder Maker at Wonderfeel. She is known for moving an idea from inception to fruition through her articulated design and production language.
Every project she touches on is built from the idea that less is more — from clean, simple graphics to minimal, Earth-friendly packaging.
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?
Happy to! I’m a particularly curious and highly creative person with a history of building companies — everything from record labels to graphic design firms. My passion for brand identity is the connection across all of my entrepreneurial endeavors.
I didn’t follow a traditional path. At the age of 19, I moved to Chicago from Minneapolis where I grew up, ready to explore the world on my own. I was immediately drawn to a group of creative kids playing cool new music at the club after landing a bartending job. It was fresh. It was different. We called it “house music”. It quickly became my passion to bring this new genre of music to the masses. I started organizing underground events, then raves, first in Chicago, and then around the globe. From these efforts grew an artist management company where I helped build careers of now world-renowned DJs including Mark Farina, and subsequently co-created the successful Mushroom Jazz label. This later merged with OM records, where I am still a shareholder. Soon after this union I was leading their artistic output and created nearly 100 album covers. I taught myself how to use design software early on and out of necessity, but the next thing I knew, I was founding my own design agency in San Francisco.
My pivot into wellness was, not surprisingly, through branding. However, there’s more to that story as you read on.
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?
This is a great question that has me scanning a lifetime of entrepreneurialism. The most interesting story spans three careers (Graphic Designer, Creative Technologist, and brand owner) and begins with my Co-founder. Just at the turn of the century a future design client, who would later become my husband, then business partner was flipping through records at the Virgin Megastore in San Francisco when he came across a beautifully designed album cover. At the time he was CEO of a food sciences company looking for someone to redesign packaging for their flagship product, Whip-it’s! As it turns out, I was the designer of that album cover and thus began a seven-year working relationship where we became great friends. A 2007 Burning Man event changed one component of that dynamic and in 2008 we were married. Fast-forward ten years to the creation of Wonderfeel which was originally conceived, developed, and sold to the largest CBD manufacturer for their first B2C brand. After a C-suite shake-up, the brand reverted back to us. At that point we realized that no one would be better suited to launch this concept than us, playing to our long history in product design, development, and marketing.
This might read more like a love story, but the takeaway for me is to truly know who you are partnering with. Understanding communication style, having some experience with conflict, and knowing how to leverage each other’s strengths and weaknesses have been invaluable for our business. It’s helped us maintain a healthy morale within our whole team.
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?
By far, the biggest mistake of them all was asking for permission! Early on in the development of Wonderfeel, I felt defeated when my best ideas for our brand were not being implemented. Knowing this would be a roadblock to success, I started working with a leadership coach, and through various techniques including simple role-playing, they helped identify my core obstacles. I realized that whether directly or indirectly, I was asking, or rather waiting for “permission” from my partner to rubber-stamp these ideas. Discovering how to get out of my own way has been both humbling and empowering! What came out of the exercise was a “just do it!” mentality that I now wield with confidence.
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?
The US healthcare system is ripe for disruption — not a well-kept secret — and by empowering people with our preventive design for wellness, we’re positioned to break the cycle of symptom-based medicine.
Our company recently launched a longevity pillar with a spotlight on healthspan. Innovations in medicine over the last century have us living well into our 80s and 90s, even 100s, so longevity science is well underway. But these longer lifespans coincide with a reduced quality of life; levying an enormous financial burden on individuals, families, and our own government healthcare programs.
We’re only now solving the problem of gaining optimal physical and mental fitness throughout our long lives. One key discovery in bioscience lives in a tiny, life-sustaining nucleotide found in every cell in our bodies — it’s called NAD (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide) — but this crucial molecule diminishes with age. Science has shown that we can increase NAD production to more youthful levels by supplementing with NMN (nicotinamide mononucleotide) the direct precursor to NAD, in turn curbing many of the diseases and general decline associated with aging, a boon for increased healthspan and our new patented supplement, Youngr™ NMN.
It was only in the last few years that NMN production costs have come down enough to make its way into consumer-based products, however, it remains out of reach for large segments of the population. Our next focus is on making this accessible to people of all income levels through research, development, and partnerships with advocacy groups for underserved populations. We believe that wellness exists not only in the body but all around us, in our communities and environment.
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.
Resist sugar
This can be one of the trickiest and toughest lifestyle tweaks, but it’s hands-down the most important thing you can do for increasing your healthspan and lifespan. Sugar kills. Period.
A good morning stretch
During sleep, blood flow decreases and while that’s really good for restoring the brain, your awake brain needs increased blood flow to concentrate and motivate. I start each morning with 5–10 minutes of gentle stretching then a bit of “nerve tensioning” to keep my midday headaches away. To make things easier, you can try one of the many paid and free apps available — FitOn is my current go-to for guided stretching.
Be PH-aware
To achieve optimal alkalinity at the cellular level we need a pH between 7.35–7.45. This is immensely beneficial when we talk about increasing healthspan. I keep my pH balance in check two ways, by following the Mediterranean diet and my secret weapon, 12 oz of warm water with the juice of half a lemon before my morning stretch. Pro tip: Swish your mouth with water immediately after (don’t brush) to protect tooth enamel.
Step out of your comfort zone
I am a firm believer in the importance of stepping outside of your comfort zone. It’s very easy to become complacent with the status quo — whether you’re 100% fulfilled or if you’re feeling like you’re in a rut. I’ve found that even making the smallest of lifestyle tweaks to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, such as complimenting a stranger, can have an impact on your overall health and mental well-being. It’s been proven that regularly stepping outside of your comfort zone can help improve your performance at work, support personal growth and boost creativity levels.
Keep learning
When it comes to learning new things and brain health, the old adage “use it or lose it,” sums it up best. Continuing to challenge your brain by learning new skills or knowledge is one of the best ways to prevent your brain from aging. The best way to keep your brain healthy and your mind active is to tap into your curiosity and explore topics, lessons and skills that interest you while flexing your brain.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
The work I’m doing with Wonderfeel brings wellness to people in a more self-determined way, but there are myriad actions that can be taken at a granular level — think kindness and acceptance — that I don’t think any individual or company can do alone, it requires a movement.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
Don’t wait for permission.
See above about the biggest mistake I made! The beauty of founding and running my own business is having the freedom to explore and act on concepts without “running it up the chain”.
Creativity and inspiration can come from anywhere.
My entrepreneurial journey has taught me that creativity and inspiration can strike in the most unexpected places. When you’re hyper-focused on building something, it’s very easy to get stuck in the weeds. Don’t forget to look up or around you. Solutions to a problem or ideas can spark from a conversation with a stranger, a piece of art, or nature.
Get out and meet more people.
The best work I’ve done is away from my computer, away from all the digital tools that keep me busy, but isolated. There is nothing more authentic, more trustworthy, and more productive than sharing stories or ideas face-to-face with another human.
There will be a lot of inefficiencies.
No one-size-fits-all roadmap exists for any business, and things are liable to get messy. As our company grows I’m learning ways to be more efficient, but by adjusting my expectations I can find solutions with a clearer head.
Be prepared to succeed.
The light at the end of the tunnel is sometimes hard to see, and if you’re not prepared that light can take you by surprise. When the momentum hit with Wonderfeel and things started to get real, a whole world of feelings and responsibility came along with it. A mindset for success is now built into my every day in some way.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Leading Wonderfeel’s sustainability efforts is a challenge I’m faced with it every day. I’m highly focused on finding solutions, but making a 100% sustainable product isn’t as easy or common as you would think. One major barrier comes from the FDA preventing bio-based materials in our supplement bottles (only petroleum-based, glass, or aluminum is allowed). This single barrier, once removed, could make a huge impact. Meanwhile, everything we make is built from the idea that less is more. From zero single-use plastics to Earth-friendly packaging, we ship in right-sized boxes using no more materials than absolutely necessary. All of this is more expensive, but we’re committed to protecting our environment and we’re hoping more brands will hop on board.
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
Wonderfeel Longevity website: GetWonderfeel.com and Instagram
Other wellness products including CBD: Wonderfeel.co and Instagram
If you’re curious about my endeavors in fine art see: Dsner.com
And of course, Wonderfeel on LinkedIn
Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.
Women In Wellness: Patricia Ryan of Wonderfeel on the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.