Episode 211: Tina Anderson - CEO & Co-Founder of Just Thrive

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Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins.

You're listening to Habits and Hustle, crushing.

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 healthier.

I hope you enjoyed 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 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.

I'm 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 I was in, then I became an attorney.

I was in litigation for many years working crazy hours and not being super fulfilled, really.

And it just, 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 the time.

You're never, 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 had the, 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 over-prescribing 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, you know, 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 having like a larger pool of people being prescribed a medicine that they maybe didn't need and it and then we started seeing it with relatives you know we started seeing it with we had one relative who started on one medication because she had like 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 i never dispute that i mean you know emergency type medicine and acute type of situations but i was more passionate about 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 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.

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 had 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.

It is, 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.

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 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 these, the licensing right to these strains and launched just thrive.

Wow.

That isn't.

So how many years ago was that?

That will coming up on 10 years.

So this May will be 10 years.

So

yeah.

Crazy.

Well, that's amazing.

First of all, I'm like, 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 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 bandit you're putting a band-aid on one thing and yet you're going to be causing another issue somewhere else, right?

So

the fact that like you're, you created something that's natural like that to me is

just extraordinary.

And I'm a big, I mean, my background obviously, well, maybe you don't know, is very much in the health and wellness fitness space.

So you're like I said, you're singing my song.

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 JustRive, but you know, 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 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 gets sick all the time or one of those people that don't?

All of these things are literally dictated by the health or unhealth of our gut and um 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 had children with a higher incidence of allergies because we know that allergies are caused by a lot of imbalance going on in our gut microbiome.

So, really important to like 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 anti, 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.

You know, 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 in 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 a gut health.

And we all know the world we're living in is so stressful.

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 can be doing, you know, not 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 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,

if your gut or your microbiome is disrupted, you cannot digest.

You can be doing everything right.

You're taking every proper supplement.

You can be sleepy.

You can do, but 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 digest, 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?

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.

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 it, you know, 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 overwhelm, the 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 they're 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 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 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,

you know, like you said, I think rashes, like I have eczema, and I think it was because I had, uh, 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, you know, autoimmune or skin condition or whatever it is, and you're not connecting the dots that that should be something to be checked how 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 or

There are stool tests out there.

And I just, we haven't really found one that we love because the problem with stool tests 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, yeah, you find this part, this is that one section doesn't represent the whole city of Chicago.

And that's what's happened.

That's one of the problems with stool tests.

The other test is testing leaky gut.

So 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 LPS toxins that seep into the bloodstream.

That is just

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.

55% of them had a leaky gut and didn't know it.

And again, that was measured by the LTS 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 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 it's kind of like that drippy faucet you know like you've got this little bit of like 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 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 we could eat kale.

Kale does not belong in the bloodstream.

And 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, do you have, 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 missed that piece,

right?

Is it something that you can take for a finite period of time and then be done?

Or are you, 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.

And you could always go to a maintenance dose and that's fine.

The thing is that we have to remember is the strain, these bacillus strains are the same types of strains that our ancestors got in the environment.

These bacillus strains, yeah,

yeah, they came from.

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 If you feel like I'm feeling really good, I eat clean, I do, you know, I'm pretty healthy.

But

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.

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 getting, they're 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 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 you know that beyond beyond i mean like i i'm telling you my i i don't have a dog but uh i have two kids who beg me for a dog but um i know i'd be taking care of the dog and i don't have time right now but what i was gonna 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, Andrew's meals.

I know.

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 very curious.

So, how are you like promoting and competing with the the big people out there because like you're dealing with like a lot of people who have like a lot of money right you started this with your husband correctly 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 here you know stuff like that but these people have like budgets of like hundreds of millions of dollars that they basically feed into these campaigns.

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 the first store got it, and it became quickly their number one selling product in the store.

And 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.

And, and, but we weren't doing, we just stayed 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 three dollars 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 because you have to compete out there like with marketing and all of that.

But we didn't have that.

You know, 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.

It was like, you have a product that works.

Everybody was talking about it.

And, you know, other store owners were talking about it.

Then we started to get 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 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.

Then we started, you know, just talking to different influencers.

I remember like one of the first podcasts that I got on was The Wellness Mama, and that was huge.

I mean, that was just, she was just, 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, you know, and it was, it just, I don't know, it just kind of snowballed from there.

And 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,

you know, I didn't know anything about that aspect of our business.

And then we just hired people.

I did, 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 picture.

You 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 you know when you don't have a lot of money you kind of feel it's hard it's 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 um yeah and right yeah no i i know i always one of the things my husband i this may will be 30 years that we've been married um i'm madly in love with relationship thank you madly in love i have three amazing kids not one my daughter oldest just got married i mean we our family is like that that is my wealth i mean i 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 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, working, I'm up at three in the morning doing all kinds of stuff.

I mean, 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 not being stressed.

And I.

Just, I would caution every entrepreneur or 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 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 um 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 incrementally, 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, my son is in like a million different sports, competitive soccer.

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 do you able to do everything?

Like, how did you kind of get yourself back on track to be healthy?

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 C, 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.

But, you know, I i would really i'm an early person so i'd wake up and i would just i would do my time meditation pardon what time do you wake up um now like six ish but before when my kids were like going like my daughter swam and she would wake up you know she'd have 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 kind of i'm i'm empty nester now actually so um that's crazy to think right now you have all the time in the world yeah i don't really like it you know like oh 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 up around 6, 6.30.

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.

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 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.

It's fresh air still.

It's still fresh air.

It is still fresh air, exactly.

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, 6.30.

Is there anything, any, 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 their gut health, their overall health without taking anything?

Have you found one thing?

Are you going to say sleep?

Are you going to say, we already talked about overall health and well-being, but is there anything actionable they can do now besides taking just thrive probiotic, right?

Right.

With 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 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 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, intermittent fasting, is a hack for your gut health as well.

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 that's a great by the way don't even that is a great tip i i had to stop you right there because that's one i've never heard anybody say yep so

that's a good one that's a good one i've never heard that that's great because we do eat the same foods i don't mean to interrupt you but i'm so happy that you said something like that because 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,

you should be eating a diverse diet with much more like, 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 and particular.

It ruined my gut.

Yeah, no, absolutely.

We're all, and, and we also live in this society where you're labeled, are you paleo?

Are you vegan?

Are you, you know, what do you, are you, you know, I mean, and it's, I, 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.

I mean, we know it's more beneficial for our gut.

Totally, I love that.

Oh, good.

I'm glad.

Yeah, no, it is.

And it's so simple to do that.

I mean, it's really simple.

Even if you don't go to the, you know, ethnic grocery stores, just going to your regular grocery store and just trying to find organic.

I, you know, 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 your gut can be healed.

This is what's so exciting.

It can be healed by doing some of these baby steps.

Tina, you're, this was really, I was really, 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, and you, and you were, 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 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, like, good for you for listening to like a topic that's so important for our overall health.

Because I'm passionate, like you are, about empowering people.

like take control of your health like I 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

like competition is not other probiotics it's big pharma I want people to you know start empowering themselves about probiotics about gut health and and when a doctor says you have this 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, we heavily, you know, our blogs are all researched.

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 thrivehealth.com.

We also have a product coach.

If you want to call our 100 number, she's awesome.

Emily, you could talk to her if you have any questions specific about the products.

I always recommend people starting with the probiotic.

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 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, um, it's 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,

yes, I love that.

I love that

you might want to start slowly, though.

Sometimes, like, it is powerful, so you sometimes start slowly, you know, you might want to go one capsule every other day, or even a half a capsule.

You could open the capsules and mix it with food.

So, you could do a half a capsule every day, just for like a couple of days to see how you tolerate it.

If you have any type of gastrointestinal discomfort, that's a great sign.

That means it's killing off, it's 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.

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 this was a lot of information.

It was good.

So, I appreciate you.

I appreciate you being on this podcast.

Well, thanks, Jennifer.

Thank you for having me.

So much fun.

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