the bossbabe podcast - 69. Creating Global Impact From The Ground Up With Tero Isokauppila

Episode Date: December 30, 2019

We’re chatting with special guest, Tero Isokauppila, founder of Four Sigmatic, a health and wellness company with a mission to help people nourish their bodies inside and out. Tero’s first love was entrepreneurship which he later entwined with his passion for mushrooms (the legal kind!), nutrition, and wellness. Tero discusses how he started Four Sigmatic (while having a full-time job) to moving his business to the U.S. with the determination to create a global impact. If you resonate with having a holistic philosophy for wellness (and biz), then you’ll love Tero’s simple, yet sustainable tips for building healthier habits.  This episode is brought to you by The Société. Join the community and learn how to start and scale your business at bossbabe.com/connectbuildgrow

There's all these like funny things that happen, but the passion and the excitement and the love is what keeps it going despite those tough times. There's nobody builds anything meaningful, truly alone. It's always a community and a team. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, the place that we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Danielle Canty, co-founder and COO of Boss Babe and your host for this week's episode. Now you guys know we pull out all the stops when it comes to getting epic guests on here and this week certainly is no different because I was joined by Tero Isokopilia, founder of the health and wellness brand Four Sigmatic, which if you follow me on Instagram at Danielle Canty, you will know I'm pretty obsessed with

their mushroom sachets and this is one of the reasons I was so excited about getting um to everyone because not only has he built an amazing business but he's really built a business with the ethos that I really admire because he wanted to make a difference in the world now he started for Sigmatic in 2012 and you're going to hear in this interview that that wasn't an easy start you know it took a lot to get it off the ground and they started in Finland but they moved to America in 2015 and they are a health and wellness company which believes in helping people from the inside and the out and like I said I became aware of them because I discovered their amazing mushroom blends which are packed full of goodness and you can add to

coffees and smoothies and they taste absolutely delicious and they really make an integral part of my morning and afternoon routine so when the opportunity came about to get Terrell on the podcast, I was so, so excited because his philosophies are very similar to mine. He really believes in a holistic approach to business as well, and you'll really see that through this interview. It's an interview of two halves. We really dug deep into what it takes to build an international company, what it takes to get investment, and really how you take that from the ground up. And so the first part of the incident to you, we really dug deep into what it takes to grow a business. You know, Tero started this in Finland, like I said, he moved it to US and it's been a decade in the

making. And so we discovered some of the trials and tribulations, the pros and cons of taking investment, not taking investment. Then we really went on to discuss how mushrooms can support you but also other superfoods and the benefits of spices and other ingredients and how as we're on this journey of entrepreneurship or being ambitious women how important it is to look after ourselves and we discuss the baseline of that what those base things are like hydration and like sleep but then moving on to those extra layers and the healthy habits that we can build into our routines that actually makes it not so hard to be healthy so it's amazing podcast like full of insights and you know full of tips

that you can apply straight away so i really really hope that you love it and in the true spirit of boss babe like we always do i really picked a quote for this episode that I felt really kind of summed it up and it was this I'm defining my own version of success and let me tell you it's pretty fulfilling now granted I did take the swear word out that we put on there on the Instagram account but the ethos is the same because we chatted about this in the interview that success really is what you place on it and as far as I'm concerned you know success is not always about the money in the bank account it really is that holistic approach being healthy and well and doing things that I love the money is nice of course I'm not saying that but it really needs to marry up and I think that's really important takeaway from

this podcast so if you enjoy it and you have loads of takeaways, please tag myself at Danielle Canty, tag at bossbabe.inc and tag Four Sigmatic. And we would absolutely love that. And we can't wait to hear your takeaways. I am so excited to say that this episode is brought to you by our membership community, The Society. Now, The Society is one of my favorite places and it's the place for female entrepreneurs to connect, build and grow. And inside the society, we provide you all the content and support that you need to build your businesses. So whether you're taking it from the startup to six figures or even beyond every single month, you will receive a new success kit from an expert in their field to help you along the way. You'll also have access to every single previous success kit that we've

ever created in the time that we've been having the society, including how to grow your email list, how to get started with Facebook ads and pixels, or even how to reprogram your subconscious mind for success. And on top of all of that, you can definitely consider your fellow society babes as your accountability partners and business BFFs. We are here to inspire, support and celebrate you every single step of the way. And you'll also get two live group coaching calls every single month, which are normally with yourself truly. And you'll always feel supported and get those questions answered. In fact, on our goal setting one, I actually start every single one with a meditation and everyone finds it super powerful we actually have a waitlist right now but we have a secret backdoor entry for all of our podcast listeners because we love you guys so much so all you need to do

is visit bossbabe.com forward slash connect build grow if the society sounds like a really good fit for you right now i hope to see you in there A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself, confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome to the Boss Babe Podcast, Harrow. It's always so exciting to have a successful entrepreneur on here, but to have an entrepreneur on here who I am like a super fan of their products, I'm very excited about this interview today. So thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks, Danielle. Happy to be on. So now you're the owner of Four Sigmatic. It's a super successful country. I think you're kind of stocked in over 60 countries right now. And your product range has grown. But I really want to just take you back to the beginning and how it all started. And I'm very curious, you know, what came first, the mushrooms or the entrepreneurial spirit? That's a very good question because they both came at the same time very young. So I'm a 13 generation family farmer out of Finland and growing up on the farm it was like a small business mindset we basically having the farm we also had

hospitality we had these little cabins by a lake that we would rent out so we were both entrepreneurs so my parents were entrepreneurs and then they also taught me about mushrooms and foraging and agriculture and nutrition. So it's hard to say. I would say that my first love was entrepreneurship, actually, because even though I learned about mushrooms, I never imagined that mushrooms or adaptogens would become my career because it was not obvious growing up that that was even a possibility. But entrepreneurship was always like the idea. So I started learning

about both at the same time at when I was yay high but I guess entrepreneurship was a bigger love I would have done it anyway at some capacity so maybe that's the answer I love that I feel like sometimes some people like born entrepreneurs and other people kind of fall into it later Natalie and my business partner she was always like a born entrepreneur. She was out there hustling, selling candy floss at like age seven or something. But it definitely found me more later in life. I was like the hardworking grafter and just kind of had all these different jobs,

but never really classed myself as an entrepreneur. So I always think it's quite interesting how kind of things start coming to light and you start following your interests. And I think when you've had parents who are entrepreneurs as well, you're almost open to the fact of, oh, hey, I don't need to get a job. I can do this on my own. Yeah, definitely teaches you to be a self-starter. And I would do all these

odd jobs as growing up. So that's the benefit. But I think it's also good to work for someone else. It does give you a lot of amazing qualities and experiences that are different, but it's good to have the confidence that you can also do it yourself if you want to. So, okay then, if we're really like taking it back and we're starting around, like Four Sigmatic was grown on the principle of, correct me if I'm wrong, but creating products with this mushroom theme, as mushrooms is the main ingredient, right? So how did that come about? Yeah.

So I have this long history with mushrooms, and I think they keep coming back to my life without me sometimes wanting them to come back to my life. So besides learning how to forage mushrooms growing up, and I went to an environmental school as a kid where I learned about foraging, including mushrooms. And then about, geez, almost 15 years ago, I won this innovation award for discovering a rare mushroom, but I didn't want to be a mushroom entrepreneur. But what I was always passionate about was health and wellness. And I started Four Sigmatic to create an authentic health and wellness brand that would implement the world's most nutrient-dense foods into your life through daily staples. So during that process, I kind of came back to some of these mushrooms that we used a long time. So growing up, I have this long heritage and lineage

with mushrooms, but Four Sigmatic was born more from the idea of superfoods, if you may. It's like, how do you take the world's most nutrient-dense foods? Even the name means basically like the 50 to 100 most nutrient-dense foods in the world, and how do you incorporate them into your diet? And just happens to be that many of them are mushrooms, and I had all this expertise in mushrooms. So that's how it came about. And growing up in health and wellness, I've already seen in my short life, a couple of these hype cycles. So something gets really trendy and then it's not. It's like high carb, low carb, animal protein, good or bad, plant-based, good or bad, keto.

Right now, I feel like it's CPD. But there are certain things that are always going to be there. And those are the things that I love the most, be it meditation, be it being in nature, sauna and cold therapy. And one of the things are these world's most nutrient dense and culturally most relevant foods like mushrooms and finding ways how to get more people to be excited about them. So that's the journey I'm on. We've actually made many products that don't have mushrooms as well, But that's the one that is the oddest. And that's why a lot of people remember.

And that has become the brand ethos in many ways. But I'm just pumped about anything that has both really strong scientific backing, but also long heritage and cultural meaning. So products that have been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years by multiple, multiple generations, and they're time-worn. So I'm excited about things that are both scientifically sound and time-worn. I think that's really interesting actually, because you're right. Mushrooms have been like very much, I feel like becoming more mainstream, but I felt like the power of them was definitely no more years gone by than it was more recently.

And obviously with your company it's really started bringing more to the forefront but I certainly know growing up I thought you know you just got one type of mushroom in the supermarket I never knew that I never saw coffee you never saw like all these different ways of having it and taking that in so it's definitely something that people are becoming more aware of and utilizing. Now I want to ask you where that journey of health and wellness came from is that because you grew up in Finland and that's part of, was your part of your upbringing on? Was it that you kind of had a personal journey that took you into that? Okay, I really want to get more into health and wellness space. I want to create something that does change people's lives.

Yeah. Right now, wellness is all the craze and a lot of people who are passionate about wellness, they have a personal healing story or something dramatic happened in their life that woke them up into the benefits of mother nature. In my case, that's not it. Sometimes I wish I had a beautiful healing story where I healed myself from, I don't know, cancer or something. But no, I grew up with it. And I actually didn't know until I was in my 20s and started realizing that not everybody lives like this. So just to give you an idea, the farm that is from my father's side, and it's been with our family at least since 1619.

And they have a long history and lineage of working with nature, producing food. And my mom was a nurse and became a nursing teacher and taught physiology and anatomy. So an acronymist and a physiology teacher. So I learned both sides. So how it is to produce food, but also how does the human body work from an early age? And that's where it started. We also lived in a farm where I would shower in spring water. I would farm every summer of my own food and then store them over the winter. In the fall, I would go and pick up mushrooms and berries and freeze them and store them and all kinds of things like that.

So it was definitely part of the upbringing, but I didn't know it was anything special. I just thought that's how our neighbors partly lived as well. And then I went to the school with 50 students that all were foraging and finding food. So it didn't seem that special until later down the road that when I realized that no this is actually

is unique. And when was that because I know that you did a degree in business and chemistry is that right? Yeah I started with chemistry and then studied nutrition and business so I one of my biggest mistakes I also got an MBA but that's another story for another day. So I don't know what I learned, but it costed me a lot. And so when did the idea of Four Sigmatic come about? So like I said, over 15 years ago, I already had an opportunity after winning this innovation contest to pursue a career in this industry. But I didn't feel I could change the world because of big food and large companies and a lot of advertising and marketing were limited by

just access to capital. And my ideas of nutrition, although time-worn and ancient, were radical. So getting people to drink mushrooms or adaptogenic roots is radical. And 10, 15 years ago, there was no avenue for me to probably raise money, especially in a small Nordic country and get money for advertising and get it done, right? So that didn't seem feasible to me until about 10 years ago. My friends started blogging and partly Facebook as well, but started sharing information for free online about things that I also believed in. One of these, some you'd call more radical or more unique ways of natural healing, anything from fermented foods to superfoods to ice therapy and inversions and things that now are pretty commonplace as well,

sound healing, things like that. And they started sharing it online. And I was like, wow, this is going to be the future. Early days of Facebook or blogging is like, this is how people will share knowledge to each other. And you can go talk straight to the consumer. You don't need to spend a lot of money on a TV campaign. You can start talking to people online and start building your tribe. And I saw that being in the future. So call it Web 2.0. And now things like podcasts, obviously, has become the way to go and less people spend time on blogs or Facebook. But the idea is the same is people can share for free or little to no money can share their knowledge and wisdom and thoughts. And if that resonates with

people, you can gather community and tribe and have that two-way relationship. And that's when Four Sigmatic was started. So 2010 was the time when I really started working on it. Launched in 2012, came to the US in 2015. So this was started overseas and then launched here in 2015. So that's the kind of short timeline. Now, we love getting into the details. You are not going to get away with that. So 2010, but you didn't launch to 2012. What did those first two years look like? Like developing a product? Like how was that? Well, the funny part is like me and my founding team were all working. So it was not full-time entrepreneurs. We had a day job and we were moonlighting trying to figure out how to do this, right?

In the ass. Yeah. And I actually didn't get paid in my first two years. And our first employee, who was not me, got paid 500 euros a month, which is, you know, whatever, 600 bucks a month. So that was the life then. And food and beverage is particularly difficult because there's a lot of government regulation and often for a good reason. So if you make muffins at home and all your neighbors love your muffins and you should sell these muffins and then, but you can't just produce them at your own kitchen. Like there's

regulation and things like that, that go in selling food items and figuring out where to source things, how to produce them. And my ambition was even higher. I wanted to do these very odd dual extracted mushroom powders that get introduced in coffee, tea, and cocoa that's even more radical. So there's a lot of figuring things out in the early days. Actually, the first pretty much five years is a lot of figuring out. So how to get the best mushrooms, how to extract the best mushrooms, who to work with on packaging, what kind of packaging, what kind of flavor, the brand image, which we clearly could have done, I think, a better job. A lot of people misspell Four Sigmatic. They don't know what it is. It's

a geeky name. There's all these funny things that happen, but the passion and the excitement and the love is what keeps it going despite those tough times. But yeah, it was such a mess, but a lot of research and a lot of ideation and because anything is possible, it's beautiful and exciting, but because everything is possible, it's also kind of distracting. You get distracted all the time because you see some shiny toy and you're like oh I want to do that as well and then you get sidetracked there are so many pearls of wisdom in that like you're so right I think this is really nice to honor first of all like you say this is 2010 and we're in 2019 now I think a lot of people think of things as overnight successes and they launch

a business and all of a sudden it's got to be super successful but I think just hearing you know you say like actually it was two years of us moonlighting and doing this on the side and trying to work things out and just honoring that process of going, yeah, it was messy. We were trying to figure things out. We were making mistakes. And, you know, definitely one thing that we always like to talk about at Boss Babe is when you look on social media, you get these snapshots into people's lives and you think, oh yeah yeah it's just super easy or they have it perfect etc but I think actually when you're like building your business and you hear others sharing that yes it is hard no matter how successful you become you have to go through these

bits and learn from them and it's part of the fun I know Natalie and I are certainly learning to embrace some of the the messy challenges that we have as startup. And so I think it's always reassuring to hear that others have been through that and sometimes continue to be going through that too. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place so it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that

this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. Still there. I'm deep in there. Every other day, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm great. And then other days, like, no, you're crap. And it's such a roller coaster, but it is such a rewarding roller

coaster as well. And you look back to those early days, not only two years of planning, but then basically another two years of not getting paid and just scrapping away. But then I remember in the early days, I had just before that for my previous employer closed like a multimillion dollar deal. And I felt nothing. I closed for someone else and then I made like a few hundred dollar order for my own business soon after and I felt like king of the world. You know, it's like, it's also such a rewarding journey, but frankly, it might not be for everyone

to be the founder. Maybe it's better to be an early employee or something else. There's many ways to have that entrepreneurial experience you don't doesn't always have to mean that you're the founder you might be a lot happier not being the founder i think that's a really good point actually just the other day we launched our planner and it's our first like physical product and we're with the team and we were so excited you know just seeing these first couple of um coming in. But we have that in our company.

We have a lot of internal entrepreneurs. So, yes, Natty and I are the founders. But, you know, our team that start with startups and they know it's scrappy, they have that entrepreneurial spirit. And they were just as excited as we were. And I think when you're working in these small teams growing something, like the passion behind it and the ethos and the love behind it really comes through. And I think that those products and those sales mean so much more than the money it just like it's all your hard work coming to fruition and actually people buying what you've put so much effort into making and creating is just such a nice feeling so I totally relate to that yeah I mean so true and

there's nobody builds anything meaningful truly truly alone. It's always a community and a team. And that's, I mean, family, think about a family. It's like that value and joy comes out of everyone and that collective thing. Somebody just needs to be crazy enough to start, but also the people who are the first to join the crazy person are truly the people that build it in a way they like validate the crazy person's idea so it's almost the first employees that are the most important not the founder and so then in 2012 you were building it in Finland until 2015 and then you decided to move the headquarters and everything to the US so what did that decision look like yeah so there was a point when we had

early traction on a very small scale overseas and we started overseas because we didn't have the money to come to the US because it's pretty expensive here. And also we were not sure, will it go anywhere or is this just a lifestyle business? And there was a point a couple of years in where I was like, okay, you got some early traction in a very small scale. And you start to think about is why you do this. Is this going to be a tiny business that is going to be a lifestyle business? Or are you trying to actually changing the world? And I answered the latter. I wanted to truly impact as many people as I can. And while thinking about that, I came to realize that no matter what people say in Europe about America is that it is still

a huge cultural driver globally. And it is a massive consumer market, but it also impacts how the rest of the world thinks about certain trends and certain things. And I felt that it was vital, absolutely vital to come to the US to have a global impact. And I did not think that it was a market where you could come and, excuse my French, but half-ass the launch. And I studied a lot of European brands who were a little arrogant with their Euro ways and thinking like, oh, we got this awesome thing and they never really took off or it took them 30 years to take off. And there's a lot of food and beverage examples of European things that did not kind of launch well.

And I think they didn't launch well because they didn't go all in. And that's why it was a really tough decision because we basically gave up on our small yet profitable European business and jumped into the US without any guarantees of any revenue and really no outside funding at that point. So it was, it was a risky move, but we felt that that was the only right way to do if you want it to have a global impact. Yeah. I mean, that must have been pretty scary, you know, coming to the US and like you say, jumping in, like not if it's such a turn your back and you bring your brand, but very different cultures as well. It's one thing I've obviously I'm from the UK

and like the cultures are just so different too. So more so than you realize at times. And from Finland, I imagine the difference is even more stark. Yeah, totally. And I think for me, the way I handled it in my brain was that I promised to myself that I'll have the best two years of my life. So actually I did not focus on the idea that I will have to be a successful entrepreneur, but my mindset was more than I'm going to have an amazing adventure and have the two best years of my life. And that was the mindset I went out in it, not to with a revenue expectation or sort of the type of like more firmer goal is I wanted to have the two best years of my life. And that made

it an adventure and actually less scary, or I embraced the scary part. It's like when you mentally prepare to have an adventure, then you're an adventure. And if something goes wrong, which it did many times over, it was not scary because I was on an adventure. And that's how I, in my own mind, kind of managed that process. But hey, we all have our own ways to psych ourselves up during tough times. Completely. I like that though. I always think of the roller coaster and I've really just learned to accept that you really

notice the highs when you've been through the lows. And actually, if it was kind of like a straight line and flat all the time, it'd be pretty boring. So that's the way I try and cope when I'm like, oh, I'm in a dam right now, but I know I'll be in up and I'm just feeling this so I can feel the highs. Yeah, I can relate to that. So you moved to the US, took investment at that point. You were here initially and then started to go out to market? Not really. I got some couple of like hardcore fans slash angels to give us a little bit of

money. And we went to a food accelerator that gave us a very small amount of money, but basically that lasted none. So I mean, it's a positive and a challenging time, but figuring out like, hey, I got to be profitable from day one. And last 10 years has been also a huge, huge growth slash hype cycle among startups. And we saw so many companies raise such big amounts of money with nothing. When we launched, I remember we came to the US and there was another food and beverage brand, frankly, pretty similar to what we wanted to build. And we met with them and they raised $4 million before they did anything. They literally did nothing and they had $4 million in their bank account. And we're like, we have like $60,000 on our bank account.

And we're trying to figure it out. And they would hire people and do things. And we're like, no, I think we're just going to do it ourselves because we don't have no money. But today, that company doesn't really exist. It's gone. But we had to figure out from day one how to build a sound business. And I see that time after time being so valuable. Even if you end up taking outside capital later, it's so valuable to

be financially sound and having the future in your control versus in some investors' control. So I do recommend that to most entrepreneurs is like before you take outside funding, especially not like friends and family funding, but actual like professional institutional capital is making sure that your numbers are legit. And that way you are in the driver's seat, not some venture capitalist. But there's many ways to be successful. And I just think that a lot of people are not aware of the risks or the factors with outside capital. And it can be very powerful, but it can also really kill businesses. It's just very frustrating when you don't have any money and everyone else is like doing nothing and they have tons of money and a fancy office and you're like living in your friend's couch. But there is value in that. I think there's a lot of value in this conversation as well,

because I personally feel it's very glorified taking investment nowadays. It's kind of seen as like the done thing. And like, are you actually anybody, if you haven't taken an investment super early, like right at the beginning. And I think whilst 100%, like I've been through situations in my previous business as well with investment. And I just think, like you say, it can be a very, very positive experience, but I think there does need to be more awareness around like the pros and the cons of it. And it's not just, oh, you're going to get that money and then that's going to fix all the problems. It's like, okay, you have to get the money, but you have to spend it wisely. And sometimes it's very easy to flitter it away.

Whereas like when you've been like having to like scrap and find those right people and negotiate on certain sales and negotiate on certain contractors, I think that's like what almost builds the foundations of the business. So that when you do get the investment later on, this is my perspective anyway, when you do get the investment later on, things are a lot more stable. You know, the ship is ready to sail. Oh, absolutely. I think we're in the brink of seeing a huge cleanup in this space. And I think a lot of these companies will go out of business and also investors will be more mindful and interested in companies that are profitable or have a growth to profitability quite soon.

But that's just right now, it's so cool to take money and have a big valuation in paper. And then you give all the rights. You give all the board seats to the investors, control the board. They have preferred share structure and all these things, blocking rights. But then it's cool if you look at things like Forbes 30 under 30, that's dominated mostly by people who have yet to succeed and yet to create anything meaningful. It's usually by people who've raised a lot of money with a wild idea, but no proof that that idea actually works at some scale. So then you

see someone having that press and fame and money power status, and then that you're drawn to it. But again, I guess everybody can define success for themselves. But to me, it was to actually have a sustainable financial model was meaningful to create sustainable agricultural products and sustainable wellness. You can't create sustainable wellness if you're financially, or it's very hard to create sustainable wellness if you're constantly broke. So when we talk about wellness, we often talk about physiological things, but there's also financial sustainability and financial wellness is also part of holistic wellness. If you're broke or living on other people's money, that probably is not sustainable wellness. I love that.

Let's move into that. What does physical wellness mean to you? Because I always think that's a really interesting topic as well. How do you balance yours? Yeah. Well, that's probably the area of wellness that I'm most comfortable with since it's something I've learned since as a kid. I mean, you always learn more, not to say anything else, but it is to me, it is truly the white belt or maybe the yellow belt of wellness karate. And the black belt is the mind. But in order to master the mind and your mental health, the physical health definitely helps. You can

learn the difficult karate moves before you learn the basics, right? And I just think that nutrition, hydration, and beverages, and movement, and physiological things are important baseline. They're like the baseline in order to, you can elevate yourself to the purple belt and brown belt and so on and so forth. So in order to have holistic wellness, eventually you have to master your mind and that's the biggest journey that we face, but it's hard to get there if your body is not straight. So to me, it matters, the fundamentals. I do a lot of things for my body, but some of them are, frankly speaking, quite, they're like my hobby. Some of the wellness activities I do, I don't really do them because I'm expecting results. It's because

I enjoy doing them. But then there's a few fundamental things that I do that truly move the needle. And those are the baseline for me. Sleep, I pretty much take a nap every single day. That's a big thing for me. Hydration, before I eat anything solid in the morning, I spend a lot of time hydrating my body. Sometimes that means fasting until lunch. Sometimes that means that I mostly consume liquids, such as like a protein smoothie in the morning. One of my favorite things is a plant-based protein smoothie with really clean ingredients to start the day. Movement, a slight low-level activity every day, such as walking, stretching. Those are some of my favorite things. Breath work. And then I consume very large amounts of different food items.

A lot of people end up consuming 10, 15, 20 foods per month. And I'm consuming probably 100 to 200 different types of plants every month with the help of herbalism. And that gives me this like different types of intelligence, these compounds found in plants and a lot more diversity. There's a lot of debate in nutrition, what you should and should not do. A lot of people love to argue. I mentioned a few other things is should you go high fat, low fat, plant-based or, you know, animal meats or like that people love to debate. But one thing that nutrition people usually don't debate is the fact that diversity in diet is really beneficial for longevity. And I just end up consuming hundreds of different plants every month with these simple tonics and elixirs and coffees, teas and cocos and other

things. And that gives me different substances that support my immunity, support my body and my wellness. And I think that's also a big kind of baseline factor that I do every day and every week. Everything you said, I completely agree with. I don't know if you actually know, but my husband and I, we are actually both chiropractors. So like obviously always had this keen interest in health. I didn't do chiropractic anymore, but we always have this conversation at home. It's like, you have to look at the basics first. And it always amazes me. Some people are like they want to do buy these gadgets or do these things and I'm like but what are you sleeping what are you drinking and what are

you actually putting in your mouth on a daily basis because if you start there and like you described that kind of karate bout about working up and layering on as you're kind of moving the needle gradually rather than just kind of like picking random things. Yeah, I think getting that baseline is so, so true. And I'm glad you brought breathwork up. Do you do that often? Or because that's something I've recently been discovering. It's very big in LA. Yeah, I mean, I grew up with different kinds of breathwork. And I find it more powerful for me than just sitting meditation, although I love sitting meditation. And some of the breath work you can tie into other activities. I used to do trail running. And just by being in the forest, running on a trail, obviously, you get to also be with your breath. I don't listen to music when I

run. So I get to hear my own breath and be in sync with it. And it's a very meditative state. Same with sauna. You sit quietly in a sauna. That's a very Finnish thing to do as well. I was going to say, very Finnish. And then go to a cold water in Finland, even in the summer, the water is pretty cold. And that's one form of breath work. And that's kind of like when you go into cold water

or you're really in a hot sauna, you have to breathe and you really have to stay with your breath. But I also do box breathing. I do kind of the Wim Hof style, all tropic breathing. That's what I did today, for example, with my team. So those are things I do enjoy. I think they're pretty fundamental, but I think at the baseline is first thing when you wake up, you go outside and get fresh air. And I think that is the simplest, simplest, simplest biohack. I mean, I love all the crazy stuff, but opening your window or going outside and then doing simple activities. I just love like Ashtanga, kind of 1A, 1B type, basic, basic movements and salutations.

And doing those, even no matter how busy you are, doing those for 10, 15 minutes in the morning, huge, huge difference in energy and well-being. And I believe in longevity, although who knows how long we'll live. But for me, it just makes me feel good every single day. 100%. So let's just chat. You touched on it a couple of minutes ago about you really making sure that you're getting at least 100 to 200 types of plants in your system regularly. So what does that look like? And I know before we jumped on this, you're like,

you know, this is not a plug for Four Sigmatic, but I genuinely love your products. So I really want you to share more about them because I know that so many of our listeners are going to be hooked once they try them and they're so good for you. So I want you to share a little bit more about what those plants look like for you and then like how you've kind of brought that into Four Sigmatic. Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up with it. So some of it comes like second nature at this point, but for a lot of people, it can be overwhelming to start learning new foods, not just superfoods or herbs, but just day-to-day staple foods. And it can be overwhelming at first. And I, let me just guarantee that like, it doesn't have to be difficult.

Often we're so ambitious that we want to learn everything immediately versus understanding that it might take a moment to practice certain things. And you don't have to learn the mushroom number 47 or adaptogenic herb number 22. You can just start with the number one, number two, number three most studied mushroom, top studied adaptogens, and incorporating them to your life and starting there and starting kind of slowly improving. But for me, and what I can recommend to others is upgrading and replacing existing habits versus trying something new. So looking at your day-to-day life and seeing is what I already do. So for Sigmatic, for example, has coffees that if you drink coffee or tea, you can upgrade it

with a product that has multiple different incredibly nutrient-dense herbs and mushrooms. And it's just a routine that is so easy to upgrade or replacing an existing habit with something that might be more nutrient dense and a little bit more biodiverse. And I think that's the easiest way to go. And what I do recommend for most people is two things that are quite easy to implement and don't cost a lot of money. So one is spices. I think spices are one of the most underrated thing in health.

It's everybody can afford even high quality organic spices, but they don't use it. So whatever you eat, start adding cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, things like that, and adding different spice blends. You can easily add another 10, 20, 30 beautiful things that are actually one of the most study things in nutrition, spices, into your diet. And it doesn't have to be spicy. I feel like spices often people think, oh, that's going to burn my mouth like a cayenne pepper. But no, it doesn't have to be. Some of them highlight, like cinnamon is a great example. It's not going to burn your mouth. But having

those things in your diet are going to improve probably your gut health. They're going to include a lot of antioxidants and they have a lot of positive benefits and it's really don't have to think about it. Just start adding more spices. The other thing I would recommend is various beverages that you consume because you might eat one, two, three, four times a day. And that's a lot of people are mindful of the calories they take, but there's a lot of beverages that don't include any calories or very low amount of calories, which are easy way, such as obviously you as a British person, a tea tradition. So having teas that have multiple different types of herbs, or I guess in the US more commonly, like I mentioned, coffee or cocoa, but having really healthy beverages in between meals is an easy way to add into your replace or upgrade in your daily life. And that way you can have a lot more of these nutrient

dense things without really making your life too difficult. Because even an almost ideal health routine is better if you can sustain it versus a perfect health routine that you can't sustain. So if you go to a really tough workout, but then you can only keep it up for a week or two, that's not as good as if you can do some sun salutations and walking every single day for the next 10 years, you're going to be a lot more fit and feel a lot better if you can sustain it. And I think upgrading foods with spices and upgrading beverages with these herbs and adaptogens and mushrooms is so easy. And that doesn't, that fits every diet, plant-based or not. Even if you're keto, you can have these things all the time. So that's the beauty thing is like they're paleo and vegan and they're keto and

everything. So it's really non-controversial things that you can do to upgrade your diet every single day and have an elevated level of wellness wherever you are today. And they can taste amazing because have a very similar routine with listen to yourself around, you know, I kind of have just lemon and water a lot in the morning. And like you said, tea. And then I actually break my fast normally with a lion's mane and cacao with that, which I put like prebiotics in and cinnamon. So it's really good for regulating blood sugar. So I actually do a lot of what you're saying and it's really I look forward to it it's so tasty and it's good for me so I'm a fan and I would just touch like I utilize the lion mane a lot I also have reishi mushrooms but what is it that we have so many different entrepreneurs who are listening or

ambitious women are like okay then how do I know which mushroom to have when is there an answer to that should you be looking to lion's mane for certain properties or like certain results versus reishi or chaga? Like how does all that work? Yeah. Again, it can be overwhelming at first. You hear these difficult words such as reishi. You don't even know how to spell it and ashwagandha. And he's like, what is this? I don't know what they are. Everybody talks about it. It can be really, really simple. And that's where I would recommend starting. So if you want general wellness, I recommend chaga mushroom, C-H-A-G-A. That's just for general wellness. It's antioxidants, skin, gut health, amazing things. For general wellness, first thing in the morning, something like chaga. You can have it as a tea. You can have it in your coffee. You can have it in a smoothie.

That's a great place. Out of the adaptogenic roots, ginsengs, I think, are the most studied and kind of more fundamental. I like actually technically not a ginseng, but Siberian ginseng or also known as eulithero. Eul Ulithero, I think is one of the most fundamental adaptogens. Again, also known as Siberian ginseng, even though it's not a ginseng. It's kind of confusing at first, but chaga and Ulithero for general wellness and in the morning. Afternoon or whenever you want to be productive, when you want to get stuff done, lion's mane mushroom is amazing. And out of the adaptogens, rhodiola. Rhodiola rosea is amazing. It's really important for me as a Nordic person. Vikings took

before battle, but it really does support productivity in a nice, nice way. And in the evening when you want to relax, the reishi mushroom, the queen of all mushrooms, is very calming and grounding. And out of the adaptogens, I recommend ashwagandha as a good pair for reishi. So chaga in the morning, lion's mane when you want to be productive, and reishi when you want to chill. That's the protocol. And that is the white belt of karate as far as goes with mushrooms. And you can pair it up with, again, smoothie, maybe smoothie with chaga, coffee with lion's mane,

and hot chocolate in the evening with reishi mushroom. Yeah, I love that. I'm going to add in the chaga. I don't do that one yet. So I'm going to add that in. I like that tip. And so are there other like superfoods that you're like, okay, I know we discussed spices as well, but are there any other things that you're like, okay, these are also awesome?

If you can, because I know if people follow Natty and i which most people do they'll already be on a lot of your your products already so what is like the next step up for like what are your favorite superfoods from that above that okay i'm gonna give you a couple non-superfoods because i think they're underrated and then i'm gonna give you a couple of superfoods. Lemon. You mentioned lemon. One of the most studied foods in the world. Adding lemon or lime, but lemon into your diet, massively helpful, highly recommended. Clean protein, although I think the protein myth is a real thing where people are obsessed with protein, but adding a one plant-based smoothie in per day can probably be really helpful to as long

as it comes from a clean, nice source. And I would recommend that. Fibers, super underrated. People are always now so obsessed with probiotics, which can be helpful, but they're also very expensive and take a long time to improve your gut biome that way. But just having enough fibers every day is so underrated. These are just so fundamental. And if I may say one more that kind of bridges the gap to the superfoods is colorful

foods, berries, and other very antioxidant rich foods, which kind of enters the world of superfoods. Superfoods often have very small amounts of calories, macronutrients, very low amount, but very high amount of micronutrients, vitamins and minerals, and then these phytochemicals and other plant-based compounds that impact our physiology many other ways. So colorful foods, a lot of color, a lot of spices, lemon, plant-based protein, fiber, those are pretty fundamental things that everybody can do. But then when you go into the world of superfoods, besides obviously the mushrooms and adaptogens that I mentioned,

believe it or not, green tea arguably might be the most nutrient-dense whole food in the world. Green tea, particularly matcha, is something a lot of people enjoy as a coffee substitute. So I do recommend just be careful with the sourcing. There's quite a big differences. Everybody says they're matcha ceremonial grade, but that doesn't really anymore mean anything. But having good matcha and the compounds found in green tea is amazing. So green tea, a great option during the day.

Just be mindful that does have a little bit of caffeine. So not the last thing in the evening or late in the afternoon, but morning, midday, green tea might be, or matcha might be a great option. And out of the spices, adding things like ginger and cayenne are more stronger ones, but those are also can be helpful. Turmeric are great ones that you can include in your diet. And if you want to start geeking out a little more on the mushroom side, looking to things like cordyceps for energy, productivity, turkey tail for immunity, tremella for beauty, those might be something you want to go further in. But we make

10 mushroom blend where you just scoop in this mushroom blend and it's everything you need. We have an adaptogen blend so you don't have to think about it just starting with chaga alliance main and rishi is a great great starting point i love it thank you so much tara honestly like the women who listen to this podcast and men actually though we really like strive to be our best selves so i know there will be so many notes made not only on the business side but really on the health and wellness side so thank you for coming in and sharing all your tips we really really appreciate it and so i would just love for you to share with the guys and the listeners, like if they're listening to this, you know, we have a big following on Instagram. We love tagging and sharing takeaways. So what's your handle that they can tag you at? Just I'm bad with social media. So

tagging Four Sigmatic is probably the best. And we can repost some of those things. But F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C. So an all social Four Sigmatic is just tag us away and we'll get back to you and maybe repost some of that stuff. I love it. Thank you. So yeah, if you want to share your takeaways, tag at Four Sigmatic, tag at bossbib.inc and tag myself, Danielle Canty. Thank you so much. Thanks, Taro. Thanks a lot, Danielle. If you loved this episode, please subscribe, download a few more and please leave us a review. I really want to hear what you enjoyed, what your main takeaways were. And I also want to know what you want to hear us talk about next. To say thanks for leaving us a review,

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