Episode 211: Tina Anderson - CEO & Co-Founder of Just Thrive
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All right, guys, we made it. We made it to 2023. Happy New Year. This is going to be the best one yet. I'm not a big person in these New Year resolutions because I don't ever believe in waiting until January 1st. I believe in starting right away. Finally, my book, Bigger, Better, Bolder, has been out now for probably a week now.

And I wanna say thank you to everybody who pre-ordered it because it debuted at number one in business. And I am just so grateful and thankful for you guys. I really do believe that we all can be more bold and show up in our life in a real way

with a little introspection, a little self-awareness, and we can design whatever we want for ourselves. I believe in creating a rich life, and that's not just money, you guys. That's about relationships, meaningful relationships, meaningful experiences. Now, if we're not born being bold, you can...

learn being bold. I have a workbook in the back of the book. So it keeps people accountable and you see yourselves getting bolder by doing these little bold moves. So we are not just acquiescing to a good enough life, but we're actually

Really going after and chasing the life we want. I want this to be a two-way conversation I want you guys to leave me reviews and comments Let me know what type of guests you want me to go after chase after let me know what you like what you don't like your words are

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it!

Today on the podcast, we have Tina Anderson, who is the CEO and co-founder of Just Thrive. Tina's journey into the world of fitness has a very unique start. She used to be a trial lawyer, but because she was so passionate about how the abuses in the pharmaceutical industry were happening, she turned towards the field of natural health.

and basically found her life's work. She channeled her energy into learning all she could about disease prevention and good health maintenance, which led her to discover the importance of gut health and how connected and crucial it is for overall wellness. To share her discovery with the world, Tina, along with her husband, created a very unique supplement that contains the superior probiotic strains of renowned researcher, Dr. Simon Cutting. And by promoting gut health and probiotics,

Tina shares her passion for wellness and helping others live their best physical and emotional lives. We've had a lot of people on the podcast talk about gut health because it's so important for our health. You know, 70% of our immune system is in our gut and the gut brain connection is really real. And so I always love having these conversations with knowledgeable people who are really making strides in a difference to help us live better.

healthier. I hope you enjoy this podcast. I loved this conversation with Tina. Leave me a comment. Let me know what you think, and hopefully you can learn something that can help you. Enjoy.

We have Tina Anderson today on my first episode of the CEO Corner, which is what I'm going to be trying to do is highlight and profile a really extraordinary entrepreneur, CEO who's really making some great moves and disruption in business. And my first one is Tina Anderson, who what I love, we're going to hear her story because she wasn't, this wasn't your business before.

And she created basically a supplement called Just Thrive, which we're going to get all into. And I want to say thank you for being my first person. And welcome to Habits and Hustle. Thanks, Jennifer. I'm so excited and honored to be your first person in this episode. So that's awesome. Excited.

I'm really happy to have you. So listen, I think your story is really extraordinary because you weren't someone who came from a typical background in the health or fitness space, wellness space, or you created a supplement called Just Thrive. Can you kind of give me a little bit about your origin story and how you kind of evolved into what you're doing now?

Yeah. So I started out as an attorney. So I went to law school and then I became an attorney. I was in litigation for many years, working crazy hours and not being super fulfilled, really. And it was like,

Crazy. Every Saturday, every Sunday I'd be at the office and every, you know, at night you're there all the time. You know, it's just about FaceTime billable hours, just so not rewarding and gratifying at all. And I just decided that and then I started to have children and I'm like, this is not

good. I want to be home and spend a little bit more time with my kids. I still wanted to work, but I didn't want to have that kind of pressure on a day-to-day basis. And so I was fortunate enough to segue my legal career into a family pharmaceutical business where I was the general counsel for the business. And so that allowed, it was a smaller business. So I wasn't working full-time crazy hours and I was able to be home with the kids a lot more than I would have otherwise. And so

Then being in that industry for a while, I just started to see a lot of the abuses going on in the pharmaceutical business. I saw a lot of the overprescribing of medications, the focus that was on treating symptoms rather than getting to the root cause of a problem. There was never a focus on getting...

figuring out like, why do you have this? Why do you have high cholesterol? Why do you have high blood pressure? Why do you have, it's all about, you know, how do we treat that symptom? And it wasn't really the way we lived our lives. And I think one of the biggest abuses we saw, which was really scary was my husband was in the business as well. And he had a pharmaceutical rep come in after we won this huge bid by,

one of the largest hospital systems in the country. And the pharmaceutical rep came in and said, "You know what my job now is? My job now is to go to every cardiologist in this hospital system and raise the number that they... Or lower the number that they prescribe a particular cholesterol medicine for." So in other words, they were opening up this... They're having like a larger pool of people being prescribed a medicine that they maybe didn't need.

And then we started seeing it with relatives. We started seeing it with... We had one relative who started on one medication because she had a skin rash and then that caused joint pain. And then that medication that she took for the joint pain caused stomach issues. And before you know it, she was on a dozen different medications and never really feeling better and having a lot of side effects from all the medications. And so...

you know, we kind of went into this. I went into this industry of like the pharmaceutical industry feeling like this is great. We're delivering life-saving medications. I'm making a difference in this world. Then to kind of feeling, well, you know what? There is a place for pharmaceuticals and I never dispute that. I mean, you know, emergency type medicine and acute type of situations. But I was more passionate about, you

you know, prevention and maintenance of health. And I didn't feel you saw that at all in the pharmaceutical industry. And so we started researching a lot of different things. We started learning about the gut. My husband and I both started researching about different products, different things that we could do to really make a difference. I read a lot of Wayne Dyer. He's one of my heroes and I love to read all of his books. And

um, every message I would get from him was like, I am not doing my, we are not doing our life's work. It's not what is passionate and not moving, you know, moving for us. And natural health was something that was really the way we lived our lives. Um,

I'd always kind of let my kids have, let their fever run a little bit. So, you know, it's your body's natural way to fight an infection. So we were, my husband was working with a naturopath and he, we've been working at different, on different types of products. And one day he called us into his office and he said, you guys cannot believe this. You cannot believe this. But

I was just approached with the opportunity to purchase these exclusive strains from London University out of Royal Holloway, London University, from world-renowned expert Dr. Simon Cutting. These are a completely different type of probiotic strain. We would be disruptors in the market. There's nothing else out there like it. It's a whole new story. It's an uphill battle, but this works. He's like, I know this will work because he's like, I know more about the gut than anybody else.

anybody, he goes, there's probably five people in this country that know more about the gut than I do. And he's like, this is the real deal. So we just dove into the research and just, I mean, I didn't know a lot about, you know, natural health and wellness or bringing a product to market, but I did know about research. And so I researched and researched and we just started learning that, you know, there was a huge flaw in the majority of probiotics that are on the market. We saw that many of them weren't surviving the trip to the intestines and getting killed off by the stomach acid. And so we,

Through all of this research, we decided to, at a very crazy time in our lives, we had two kids in high school, one in middle school, and we put our life savings into it and purchased the licensing right to these strains and launched Just Thrive. Wow. So how many years ago was that? That will be coming up on 10 years. So this May will be 10 years. So, yeah. Wow.

Crazy. Well, that's amazing. First of all, I'm like, I'm you're singing my song. I'm like, not I really, it really even bothers me taking an Advil. I think that even that bothers me because I can feel the disruption, like my digestion, even by taking one or two Advils, if I have a headache.

I know it's, I don't like digest properly after it. So the side effects that actual like pharmaceutical medicine has is just abhorrent. And people don't realize that you're, you're banned, you're putting a bandaid on one thing and yet you're going to be causing another issue somewhere else. Right. So I, I, the fact that like you're, you created something that's natural like that to me is, uh, is just extraordinary. And I'm a, I'm a big fan.

I mean, my background, obviously, well, maybe you don't know, is very much in the health and wellness fitness space. So like I said, you're singing my song. Yeah.

And gut health is, I think it's become, and this is what we'll get into it. I want you to tell us about Just Thrive, but why I also wanted to have you on is because gut health is such a major part of someone's health. And sometimes people don't realize the brain-gut connection is real.

So tell us what Just Thrive is and like why the strains that you got is so extraordinary. Yeah. And I think even when you touched on the importance of gut health and it is so important. And I love that you brought me on to like...

share this with your listeners because it is so important. And I think people don't really understand that. I think a lot of people are understanding that, oh, I have some gut imbalance going on. You know, I have gas or bloating, diarrhea, constipation. But that's just one sign of having some gut imbalance. I mean, you have a skin rash. You have acne. You have, you know, you have mood issues, anxiety, depression, like you had mentioned, the gut-brain access. So, you know, there are...

allergies, autoimmune issues, our immune system, how we're able to fight infections, how we're able, you know, are we one of those people that get sick all the time or at least one of those people that don't? All of these things are literally dictated by the health or unhealth of our gut. And we take vitamins and supplements. People take vitamin D, vitamin C, multivitamins, very important things to be taking.

But foundationally, if your gut is inflamed, it's not absorbing those nutrients. So the number one thing we need to be focusing on is our gut health. And unfortunately, the world we live in is so disruptive to our gut health. I mean, we are doing things every day that are killing our bacteria. You know, we are 10 times more bacterial cells than we are human.

So it's really hard for people to grasp that. I mean, we actually are more bacteria than we are human, 10 times more. And yet we live in this world that's so antibacterial from antibacterial hand sanitizers to antibacterial soaps to, you know, the household products that say kills 99.99% of the bacteria. In fact, there was a study that came out that households that use products that say kills 99.99% of the bacteria actually had children with a higher incidence of allergies because they're

we know that allergies are caused by a lot of imbalance going on in our gut microbiome. So really important to remember that all these household cleaning products, all these, you know, a lot of our, what are, oh my gosh, like, you know, hair products and those types of things are all really disruptive to our gut health, as well as antibiotics. And not just antibiotics, just a single course of antibiotics can wreak havoc on your gut for up to two years.

Totally. Yeah. But antibiotics are actually in our food supply too. They're in the meat products that we're eating. Glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup, is sprayed all over our produce. And yet we're eating this on a daily basis. And I would arguably say that...

glyphosate and Roundup is actually worse than antibiotics because glyphosate only targets the bad bacteria. I mean, sorry, only targets the good bacteria. So it's actually only killing off the beneficial bacteria. So stress is another huge offender to our gut health. And we all know the world we're living in is so stressful. So

So it's really sad that we're living in this world, but there is good news. You know, we can heal our guts and there are different things that we could be doing, you know, in addition to just taking a probiotic. But there are lots of good there is good news and we can heal our gut. And that's what we have to remember. But that's why I'm always so passionate about how foundational gut health is and that when you're on your health journey, it is the most important place to start is your gut.

I agree. And I think you said something that is really important that people, I think, sometimes get lost in because the truth is there's a lot of information out there about gut health and the importance of having, and the gut brain connection and the microbiome. I think it's become very, very hashtag friendly, right? The problem is a couple of things. Number one,

too much information. People don't know what's good, what's not good and how to really heal the gut. That's the first part. The second part is what you said is that people don't know a lot of times that if you have, uh, if, if your gut or your microbiome is disrupted, you cannot digest, you can be doing everything right. You've taken every proper supplement. You can be

You can be trying to do the right things, but if you're not digesting what you're supposed to be digesting, the nutrients that you're supposed to, like if you're eating properly, let's say, and taking the vitamin D and the omegas, but you can't digest it, what's the point? It's a total waste of time. So what I really want to get to with you is that how do you differentiate with all the noise out there? Like what makes Just Thrive more effective than something else?

something else? Yeah. Well, we based everything on research. You know, we're all, we're like, you know, there's a lot of good supplement companies out there, but nobody is researching. Nobody's doing double blind human clinical trials. Nobody's doing gastric survivability studies. So when we launched the first study that we did was something called a gastric survivability study. So the big thing with a probiotic is it needs to arrive alive in the intestines. And

It doesn't need to be alive in the refrigerator. It doesn't need to be alive when you take it. It needs to be alive when it gets to the intestines. And that is probably one of the biggest myths out there, that a probiotic needs to be refrigerated or that that's a better probiotic. And I understand where that came from. It came from the fact that you need a live microorganism. But

It needs to be alive when it makes that journey from the refrigerator to your house, into your mouth, down your intestine tract, and then hitting the stomach acid, which is very acidic and meant to be the gastric barrier.

and getting into the intestines. The overwhelming majority of probiotics on the market just don't make that journey to the intestines alive. So the biggest thing is that with Just Thrive, the spore-based probiotics actually make that journey from the mouth to the intestines 100% alive.

And we've studied this. We've studied this over and over again. We have third-party labs, independent third-party labs that have studied the majority of probiotics on the market, sold the top-selling ones out there that die by the time they get to the intestines. And the strains in Just Thrive actually survive 100%. They get to the intestines 100% alive. And when they get there alive, they actually stay there for about 21 to 28 days.

Whereas most probiotics, if they did get there alive, if any of them did get there alive, they would just pass through similar to food. So the best analogy I could give in this situation is if you envision a garden and the garden has been stepped on and trampled on and there's weeds growing all over that garden. And then you kind of compare that to your gut. In your gut, you have pathogenic bacteria, then you have beneficial bacteria. So kind of equate those to the good plants and the weeds. So the...

those conventional probiotics you find out there, you throw those seeds into the garden and most of them never even get there. But let's say they did get there. Maybe one will plant a pretty new plant in there. They'll do something, but then they leave the garden. They're not doing anything with the weeds in the garden. They're not doing anything with the plants that have been stepped on and trampled on.

Whereas the strains in Just Thrive, these bacillus spore-based strains, you throw them into that garden, they get there 100% alive. They attach to the soil. So they attach to your intestinal cell wall. Then when they get there, they have the ability to help get rid of the weeds in the garden. So actually these bacillus strains get to your intestines. They have the ability to reduce the amount of pathogenic bacteria in the gut.

Then on the flip side, they go in there and take those plants that have been stepped on and trampled on and help bring them back to life. So in your gut, they're going in there and they're helping bring that bacteria that's already belongs to you that's there and helping it bring back to life. And why this is so critically important and why it's so different than any other probiotic you'll find on the market is that these create diversity in the gut.

The human microbiome project was launched by the National Institutes of Health about, you know, 10, 15 years ago. It told us more about the gut than we ever knew before. And now what we found from that is that diversity is key. In order to be healthy, you need to have a diverse microbiome. And by diversity,

These strains, the bacillus spore strains, get into the intestines and they have the ability to create more diversity because they're bringing your own bacteria back to life. And that is really the key. They're creating more of our bacteria. You could take a probiotic with 15 different strains, 20 different strains, 50 different strains.

But they're not making any impact in that gut. The way you need to make an impact in diversity in the gut is by taking care of your own bacteria that already belongs to you. And that's why we see such profound results because we are literally changing the makeup of the ecosystem of our gut bacteria with these strains.

You know, one question I always am curious about is, is it something that once you kind of fix, if you have like digestive issues or bloating, or if you have...

Like you said, I think rash is like I have eczema and I think it was because I had my I had gut issues, but I never put the two together. Right. So you have. Right. So a lot of people may like we were saying at the beginning of this is that you may have some type of autoimmune or skin condition or whatever it is, and you're not connecting the dots that that to be something to be checked out.

Is there a way you can check to see the health of your gut? Or is it just like trial and error and just think, well, maybe I have this because of my gut? Like, is there an actual way that people can scientifically see how their gut is disrupted? There are stool tests out there. And we haven't really found one that we love because...

The problem with stool tusks is, you know, the analogy I like to make is like if you take the city of Chicago and you go to the west side of Chicago and you find this part, that one section doesn't represent the whole city of Chicago. And that's one of the problems with stool tusks.

The other test is testing leaky gut. So, um, the way you test if you have a leaky gut is you measure LPS toxins in the bloodstream. And we did this, we actually did a double blind human clinical trial on leaky gut, you know, measuring LPS, which is lipopolysaccharide. There's, um, LPS toxins that seep into the bloodstream. Um,

I'm taking notes. Okay, good. But that test is just not readily available. You can't go to Quest and take that test. That was done in a research setting. But there are estimates out there that say 80% of the adult population has a leaky gut and doesn't know it. I mean, chances are because of this world we live in that is so offensive to our gut health, the majority of us have some level of dysbiosis going on, whether you have outward symptoms or not. And

The interesting thing about the leaky gut study we did is it was done on 100 college students. They took 100 college students who were healthy. They had no they were not on any medication. They had no symptoms, nothing like that. Young, healthy. Fifty five percent of them had a leaky gut and didn't know it. And again, that was measured by the LPS toxins that were going into the bloodstream.

And so now we have this, we have 55% of them. We sent them home, half of them with the placebo, half of them with the spores that were found in Just Thrive. And we saw a 42% reduction in the LPS toxins. So to answer your question, there isn't a great study out there. But we do know that

most people are suffering from some gut dysbiosis. And it's kind of like that drippy faucet. You've got this little bit of... Those college students all had a leaky gut and didn't know it, but it doesn't mean that things aren't seeping into that bloodstream on a constant basis. So you were saying earlier, you could eat all these healthy foods and you're not absorbing the nutrients. Yes, absolutely. That's one aspect of it. The other is if you have leakiness in the gut and

and your food particles start seeping into your bloodstream, your immune system reacts and starts this inflammatory response. And you don't want that to be happening. So, you know, we could eat kale. Kale does not belong in the bloodstream. You know, you could eat broccoli. It doesn't belong in our bloodstream. And that's what starts happening when you have this leakiness of the gut.

So is this something that you think we can fix and then we just move on and not like, are you saying you're going to take pro? This is a, so Just Thrive is a probiotic. So correct. So, right. So just in case people miss that piece. Yeah. Right. Is it something that you can take for a finite period of time and then be done? Or are you basically saying that people have to be on a probiotic like all the time?

Okay, so... Can you fix it and move on, basically? Yeah, it's always, you know, of course everybody wants to fix an issue and then move on. You could always go to a maintenance dose and that's fine. The thing is that we have to remember is these bacillus strains are the same types of strains that our ancestors got in the environment.

These bacillus. Yeah. I'm looking at your thing. Yeah. They came. Go ahead. I'm looking at this while you're talking. Yeah. No problem. They came from our environment. And so our ancestors were eating, they would eat roots and tubers off the land and they would get these strains on a daily basis. So in our eyes, this is almost like a functional food meant to be consumed on a daily basis or on a regular basis. It doesn't have to be every day. If you feel like I'm feeling really good, I eat clean. I do, you know, I'm pretty healthy. And, but I,

It just because of this world we live in that is constantly disrupting our microbiome and the foods that we're eating and the chemicals that are around us and the stress that we have on a daily basis. We would recommend taking it on a regular basis that could regular could be different. Every third day is fine. Every other day.

Or I think what I think also can happen, which is what I do. I mean, this is what I've done is I take it and then I feel once I feel like I'm having some like gut issue again, I start taking again. Like I kind of go on and off of it depending on what I'm doing in my life. But you have a don't you have like one for a pet?

Yes, yes, because dogs have leaky gut. That's what's so crazy. We did a study on that. Dogs actually have leaky gut also. And dogs, especially because dogs are in parks and they're sprayed with glyphosate, sprayed with Roundup, and the poor dogs are just having unprecedented amounts of cancer and all kinds of digestive issues. And it's because they're eating these glyphosates on a regular basis. And

yeah, so we have, we actually have a study on leaky gut for dogs and found that these strains are helping with leaky gut and dogs. And so, I mean, it's super popular. I mean, people are like, I was going to ask you, I was going to say, is the, what is the leak? Is the just thrive for dogs actually more popular than for people? Because people

like their dogs more than they like themselves and people. Right. No, not yet. Not yet. No, I'm surprised though. Maybe because we first launched the human product. So right, right, right. You know, people love it. Yes. It's like, Oh, people love their dogs. And I mean, we know that beyond, beyond, I mean, like I I'm telling you my, I don't have a dog, but

I have two kids who beg me for a dog, but I know I'd be taking care of the dog and I don't have time right now. But what I was going to say is I literally have friends who feed their dogs better than they feed their own children. I'm not joking. I know. I know. I've seen it. I mean, I know it's.

Yeah. Don't get me started on like the kids meals and things like that. And I'm like, and then, but then they're taking care, they're getting this organic food for their dog and their kids are going to get the kids meals at wherever McDonald's or wherever. I know I feel your pain. It's crazy. I mean, I'm not joking. That's a market in itself. I mean, I would like to know, like, so let's get to the business piece of it for a moment because I'm, I'm, I'm very curious. So

How are you promoting and competing with the big people out there? Because you're dealing with a lot of people who have a lot of money, right? You started this with your husband, correct? You guys are partners, you said. You started 10 years ago. How do you compete? How do you market? How do you get the word out? I mean, yeah, you're doing podcasts and stuff like that. But these people have budgets of hundreds of millions of dollars that they basically feed into these campaigns, right?

Yeah, no, great question. The way we started was literally I was cold calling health food stores and small independent retailers and I would call them and they would hang up and I'd call them and they'd hang up and I just kept going and kept going and, you know, nothing was above me. I was like, I just got to call these people and then all of a sudden, you know, I got the, I remember the first store and they were like, this makes so much sense. I never thought it made sense for all these probiotics to be in the refrigerator and your studies on this product are amazing and so I

The first store got it and it became quickly their number one selling product in the store. And then I found another one. And then we started... Next thing you know, we're like in five to seven different stores. And we actually had a little business going because these are repeat customers and that kind of thing. And then we started getting into larger chains. But we weren't doing...

we just stay to who we were. You know, I couldn't, we don't have the margins in the product like a lot of these big companies do. I mean, these companies, you know, a lot of these companies are buying the supplements for two or $3 and selling them for 50 or 60. And it's like, we just didn't have the margins. And now I see why they have those margins. Cause you have to compete out there like with marketing and all of that. But,

We didn't have that. We didn't have the budget. We didn't have that. We just literally told our story and what happened and the product works. So that was really the best marketing we could do is that you have a product that works. Everybody was talking about it and other store owners were talking about it. Then we started getting into stores and then about...

About three years into the business, I mean, it was a slow, very slow build. And about three or so years into the business, we, maybe four years, we started to crack the online piece. You know, we got on Shopify. We were never even on Shopify. That's how, like,

backwards we were in the beginning and um we got on shopify we started learning about that we learned about email marketing and the importance of that we were email we were sending emails all the time because we're so passionate about research and education that we were sending emails but we weren't ever like asking them to buy our product we were just giving information then we started learning about marketing through email which has been really really beneficial to us um

Then we started just talking to different influencers. I remember one of the first podcasts that I got on was the Wellness Mama. That was huge. She loved our products. I met her at an event and she was like, oh my God, I love your products. I've heard so much about it. I'm like, you love my products? It just kind of snowballed from there. I think

when you have a product that works, it really does do a lot of the marketing for itself. But then you have to market. I mean, that was the one thing I didn't know anything about marketing or marketing

You know, I didn't know anything about that aspect of our business. And then we just hired people. We didn't hire people for many years, actually. And then we started hiring people. And that is one piece of advice I would love to give entrepreneurs is you got to hire people because when you start hiring people, it allows you to really do the real, not the real work, but the big picture of the work.

You've got to delegate to elevate is what I always say. Love that. Yes. Yes. You have to. And it's hard to do. And, you know, when you don't have a lot of money, you kind of feel it's hard. It gets hard. But then you're you're stuck in the minutia of a lot of stuff. And then you're not able to focus on things that really grow, grow, grow your brand.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. No, I know. One of the things, my husband and I, this May will be 30 years that we've been married. Congratulations. Thank you. Madly in love. I have three amazing kids. Not one, my oldest just got married. I mean, our family is like, that is my wealth. I mean, I can't tell you how passionate I am about, like,

you know, like everybody is, but I just, I, I'm so proud of like what we've built together. And then, so we started this business and I said to him, you know, we were older at the time and I said, you know,

this is got, we cannot let this disrupt what is so important to us. Like, this is exciting that we've got this opportunity and we're going to put into it, but we can't let that happen. So what happened is I ended up like working crazy hours. I mean, I beat every one of my kids games. All three of my kids play college sports. I'm at my, at the games with like lap, my laptop in hand. I'm,

you know work up at three in the morning doing all kinds of stuff it was crazy and i let myself go and it's like you have to be careful with that and that's why i'm like laughing because i'm like okay i sat here and you know preaching health and wellness and and not being stressed and i just i would caution every entrepreneur anyone that's starting out there is just take care of your health in the process it will cost you more if you don't take care of it now because

it really does make a difference. I mean, you know, you have to have the energy because then you burn yourself out so badly that you just can't function. And I mean, that happened to me. I mean, that happened to me at one point. I was like, I just, I couldn't even write an email. I was like so overwhelmed. I'm like, here I am, like, you know, on podcast talking to everybody and I can't even function. So,

So I would say keep it all in. You know, it's important to keep everything in perspective while you're growing your business, but take care of your health first and foremost, like success measured in so many different ways. Financially is one of them. But, you know, your relationships need to stay strong, which I was good about that. It's just and your health needs to stay strong as well.

Right. Health. I mean, I know it sounds very cliche, but health is wealth, right? If you don't have your health, you have nothing. You can't do anything. People don't realize, you know, like when you when you even have a cold, right, or a cough.

You know, it slows you down so increment, like so much, right? Like, and people forget that. And so I agree. And again, you're preaching to the choir when you are a mom and you have kids, like I have, my kids are also like my daughter's in competitive dance and my, my son is in like a million different sports, competitive soccer, um,

I mean, like it is really hard to do that. And like, that's why I was going to ask you what your routine is, because you are the CEO, you're growing a company. I mean, yeah, it's been around, but it's like, it's a grind. Like you're working to build and grow. And you have your family and you have the kids. I mean, now they're older, you said. But how do you, how are you able to do everything? Like, how did you kind of get yourself back on track to be healthy? Yeah.

Well, I started hiring bigger roles in the company where they were really taking over a lot of my day-to-day tasks. That was huge. I always tell our, he's now our COO. I told him he saved my life because it was like, he took so much off my plate at the time. Right. But, you know, I would really, I'm an early person, so I'd wake up and I would just, I would do my meditation. Pardon? Yeah.

What time do you wake up? I'm now like six. But before when my kids were like going to like my daughter swam and she would wake up, you know, she had practice at six in the morning. So I'd be up at five ish. And so but six. But now I I try to I'm trying to sleep a little bit more. I'm I'm I'm

empty nester now, actually. So that's crazy to think. Right. Now you have all the time in the world. Yeah. And I don't really like it, you know? Like, oh my gosh, Christmas was so great having everybody home. So, and I've got one in college that comes home in the summer, but I try to get around 6, 630. I try to get up and do my, I love that alone time and just doing my meditation or my deep breathing. I do some sit-ups in the morning because I don't like doing sit-ups. So I like to get it out of the way. And yeah,

Just drink my lemon water. And I do. I'm a big walker. I walk all outside, even in Chicago through the winter. I walk almost every day unless it's like dangerously cold or icy. I walk pretty much every day. And that's my go to just Zen time. I just love to walk outside. I love being in nature. I think it's super important, even if it's in a neighborhood. I just love the outside, even if it's gray and gloomy here. I'll do it. So it's fresh air still. It is. It is still fresh air. Exactly. Yeah.

So I always ask people what their healthy habits are, of course, because the podcast is called Habits and Hustle. So you're saying walking, lemon water, you meditate, you wake up around 6, 630. Is there anything, can you give us from all your learnings? I mean, you're growing a brand that's around gut health. Any kind of tips where people could try to improve health?

their gut health, their overall health without taking anything? Have you found one thing? Are you going to say sleep? We already talked about overall health and well-being, but is there anything actionable they can do now?

Besides taking just Thrive probiotic, right? For their dog and themselves. Right, right. Oh, yeah. I've got lots of things, you know, like we said, meditation, you know, just being knowing that there's this gut brain access. The gut is sending signals to the brain and the brain is sending signals to the gut all the time. You know, there's a reason why we get butterflies in our stomach when we're excited and

why you have to go to the bathroom when you're nervous. I mean, that's real. There are signals going back and forth to each other all the time. So the calmer you are, your brain will send signals down to the gut. So changing your lifestyle, if it's super stressful and trying to make, you know, changes in your lifestyle where you just are calmer. The other thing is intermittent fast. I'm a fan of intermittent fasting. I know that could be controversial to some people and I only think you should do it if you are, if it's, if it works for you. But I,

Um, there are studies that show that that time that you're not eating actually creates diversity in the gut. Some of the bacteria will proliferate when they are being starved. So having that time, um, intermittent fasting is a hack for your gut health as well. Um,

And then on the flip side of that, when you do eat, eating a very diverse group of foods, even going to ethnic grocery stores and getting different types of vegetables and eating lots of diversity as a society. We eat, I think it's like on average, six to 12 different types of food throughout the whole year. Whereas before our ancestors used to eat hundreds of different types of food on a regular basis, on a yearly basis. So trying to eat diversity will actually help with diverse, creating diversity in your microbiome.

And then, of course, like...

you know, a lot of times you hear people say and drone on about the same thing you hear over and over again. And very rarely do you get something you're like, oh my God, I never heard that. But it makes perfect sense. If you have to have a diverse microbiome and gut, right? It makes sense that you have to eat a diverse diet

You should be eating a diverse diet with much more. And to that point, I think I became intolerant to a lot of foods because I was eating them over and over and over again for so many years. And I was so specific in particular. It ruined my gut. Yeah, no, absolutely. And we also live in this society where you're labeled. Are you paleo? Are you vegan? Are you, you know, what are you? I mean, it's.

I am more of this mindset of like trying to eat a lot of different types of foods. And I think that is definitely more beneficial. And we know it's more beneficial for our gut.

Totally. I love that. Oh, good. Yeah. And it's so simple to do that. I mean, it's really simple. Even if you don't go to the ethnic grocery store, it's just going to your regular grocery store and just trying to find organic. Of course, I'm a huge fan of organic foods just because we don't want those glyphosates. We want to minimize them. And nobody can make, you know, it's hard to make huge,

changes, but baby steps. If we start doing some of these baby steps, you start to, you know, you preach this all the time, you know, but the baby steps really do create profound results in your gut and in your gut can be healed. This is what's so exciting. It can be healed by doing some of these baby steps.

Tina, I'm really happy you came on this podcast. I really love this conversation. Thank you. This was a breath of fresh air, really, because I love when I hear something that's not the same information over and over again, and you gave it to me. So I really thank you for being on the podcast. Oh, thank you. I loved being here. You're an awesome host. And

And thank you for sharing this knowledge with your audience because I just feel like, and for anyone listening, it's like you just want to say good for you for listening to a topic that's so important for our overall health. Because I'm passionate, like you are, about empowering people. Take control of your health. And you were asking about other probiotics out there. I don't really...

I know our probiotic is the best, but I'm happy that anyone's going to any probiotic at this point because my competition is not other probiotics. It's big pharma. I want people to start empowering themselves about probiotics, about gut health. And when a doctor says you have this problem,

and you need to go on this medicine, ask why, but why do I have this? And how can I get to the root cause? Maybe be on that medication for a little while, but then how do we get to the root cause of it? And then the root cause almost always leads to the gut. So I'm all about just empowering people. And that's why we focus heavily. Our blogs are all research. We have a lot of research on there. And we want people to really empower themselves to take control of their health and feel their best.

I love that. I love that. Where can people buy it? Like, where can they find it? Where can they buy it? I know you said that, you know, health stores, obviously your website. Yeah, that's probably the website's probably our best spot. It's just thrive health.com. Um, we also have a product coach. If you want to call, I want a hundred number. She's awesome. Emily, you could talk to her. Um, if you have any questions specific about the products, um, I always recommend people starting with the probiotic and, um,

And, you know, there's a 90 day. I just I do love the idea. Sometimes people feel a difference within a couple of days. But to see those true changes, you probably want a couple months on the product. So we have a 90 day. That's a pretty good deal that you could get. But I think the other thing is you had talked about side effects or within the pharmaceutical industry earlier, I think. And I always laugh because like side effects of this product are like insane.

increased mood, your better mood, like better sleep, better weight management. You know, I can't tell you the amount of people who are like, oh, you know, I started taking this because I had gas and bloating, but like I started losing a few pounds. And it's like, well, yeah, when you start going to the bathroom regularly, it's amazing what happens. You know, you start to get rid of those toxins. You're able to metabolize your food better. You know, it's your microbes that are dictating that. So

It's just, it's so exciting what happens when you start on this product because you start seeing all these other benefits as well. Right. The byproduct of the product, basically. Yes. Yeah.

I love that. I love that.

a great sign. That means it's killing off, it's because something called die off. So it's actually killing off the pathogenic bacteria and your body's just kind of, you know, uncomfortable. So that's why we say just go slowly, but that's a good sign. It means you've got some pathogenic bacteria going on and you're getting rid of it. Um, so don't be scared away from that, but that's why we just, it's only like 10 to 20% of the people that actually have that. But if you have it, don't be scared. That just means that more that it's working, but

go slowly and it's great for kids like I was saying you could open it up and mix it with their food they won't even know it's there it's tasteless colorless odorless super easy if you don't want to you know swallow the capsule but so easy just take one with food every day and it's super easy

I love that. Well, thank you so much. I'm going to jump. I feel like, I feel like, uh, this was a lot of information at was good. So I appreciate you. I appreciate you being on this podcast. Well, thanks. Thank you for having me so much fun.

Habits and Hustle, time to get it rolling. Stay up on the grind, don't stop, keep it going. Habits and Hustle, from nothing into something. All out, hosted by Jennifer Cohen. Visionaries, tune in, you can get to know them. Be inspired, this is your moment. Excuses, we ain't having that. The Habits and Hustle podcast, powered by Habit Nest.