The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - The Best Kept Health & Beauty Secret That You Haven't Heard Of Ft. Carly Stein Of Beekeeper's Naturals

Episode Date: April 12, 2021

#347: On today's episode we are joined by Carly Stein. Carly is the founder and CEO of the groundbreaking company, Beekeeper's Naturals. On today's episode we discuss how Carly discovered the cure to an illness she was dealing with using bees. We also discuss how bees produce some of the world's most powerful healing remedies. This is also a deep dive into an entrepreneur who didn't take no for an answer and came out the other side a massive success.  To connect with Carly Stein click HERE To learn more about Beekeepers Naturals click HERE Check Out Lauryn's NEW BOOK, Get The Fuck Out Of The Sun HERE To connect with Lauryn Evarts click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential  The Hot Mess Ice Roller is here to help you contour, tighten, and de-puff your facial skin and It's paired alongside the Ice Queen Facial Oil which is packed with anti-oxidants that penetrates quickly to help hydrate, firm, and reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, leaving skin soft and supple. To check them out visit www.shopskinnyconfidential.com now.  This episode is brought to you by Olive & June The Olive & June Mani system is the secret behind salon-perfect at home, all-in-one, no guessing, no messy nails, no salon price tag. All TSC Him & Her listeners can no get 20% off your first mani system with our code SKINNY. Visit www.oliveandjune.com and use promo code SKINNY at checkout for 20% off your first mani system.  This episode is brought to you by Versed. Versed is the non-toxic, cruelty-free, and vegan skincare brand that’s hyper-focused on bringing you real results at prices your bank account appreciates. Their products are made with proven ingredients at skin-changing levels, without the fussy packaging and conventional markups. You only pay for what matters—the goop inside the bottle Get 10% off for first time users when you shop at versedskin.com with promo code SKINNY This episode is brought to you by HUSH Hush is on a mission to help people around the world relax with ease and fall asleep faster whenever they wish. We love the lunar grey throw. It's the perfect weighted blanked to help melt away anxiety and sleep better. Hush also has an amazing give back program where they donate 1 in 10 adult blankets and 1 in 5 kids blankets to charities and shelters in need. You also have a 100 night money back guarantee . Visit https://hushblankets.com/ and use code SKINNY for 10% off all items! Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. After 11 years of having the Skinny Confidential, I launched product. We launched product. It's so exciting. And this product is here to micromanage face bloat. You know I have you covered. I had horrific jaw surgery and I learned what works for bloat and I learned what doesn't. And I'm telling you this tool and cooling oil is going to snatch your face. Your cheekbones are going to be so tight and contoured. I am telling you, it's pink. It's cheeky.

It's heavy. It holds cold like no other. It even has a thumbprint where you can sort of press up on your face to really get in there. It snatches my face every single morning. I'm telling you, I cannot even start my skincare routine without it. My favorite thing about the Hot Mess Ice Roller, though, is it holds cold, like I said, okay? There's so many other rollers on the market that get warm after two minutes, which is so annoying. No one has time for that. The other day, I had my Hot Mess Ice Roller out, and I fell asleep, woke up, and it was still cold. I'm not even joking you. You're

going to be so obsessed with every single pink detail. Of course, I also included an ice queen facial oil for you, which is this cooling, amazing oil with a little bit of menthol in it. Blueberry seed oil, pomegranate seed oil and raspberry seed oil. All of it has tons of antioxidants, vitamins, and most importantly, it fights inflammation. You can use them together. To check out the new product line, go to shopskinnyconfidential.com. I hope you guys fucking love it. She's a lifestyle blogger extraordinaire. Fantastic. And he's a serial entrepreneur. A very smart cookie. And now Lauren Everts and Michael Bostic are bringing you along for the ride. Get ready for some major realness. Welcome to the skinny confidential, him and her. It was actually in that moment I was sitting there and I was like, I'm 26 years old.

You know that I've been treated like absolute shit on this team. You know what I've gone through here. And you're telling me that there is certainty that I'm going to fail at this team. You know what I've gone through here. And you're telling me that there is certainty that I'm going to fail at this path. Like, I don't want to be anything like you. And that's, you got to be in a pretty sad place or justifying something really aggressively that you regret to do that. And that was my moment where I was like, yeah, I'm done. Howdy, everybody. Welcome back to the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show. I just sounded like Woody from Toy Story.

I'm fucking sorry. I'm really fucking sorry. That clip was from our guest of the show today, Carly Stein. She is the CEO and founder of Beekeepers Natural. And this story packs a punch. It's one of my favorite stories that's ever transpired on the Skinny Confidential Him and Her Show from an entrepreneurial standpoint. This is, you know, this founder, Carly, she really has it all. It was one of my favorite stories that's ever transpired on the Skinny Confidential, him and her show from an entrepreneurial standpoint. This founder, Carly, she really has it all. It was one of my favorite conversations. Lauren, what do you think? I think that this podcast is so amazing for anyone

who is an entrepreneur, wants to start their own endeavor, and also for someone that's having a struggle because she was struggling with something and she turned the struggle into lemonade. And she got a lot of no's along the way. A lot of no's. And I think that she took what was bothering her and she created a solution to it. And I have so much respect for it. She's so honest in this interview and so open. And what I really, really love about Carly is that her brand has such a strong story. I'm so attracted to storytellers and

someone that has a journey that they launch a product that has to do with it. I mean, it just was so inspiring to me, especially because I just launched product. She's eloquent, she's well-spoken and she is smart as fuck. And spoiler alert and not to ruin the punchline of the show, but Carly convinced me to quit the show and become a beekeeper. So this will be the last episode that you ever hear us. I could literally see you buying a whole beekeeper situation on Amazon. Honestly, she was telling me about beekeeping and nothing has ever called to me so much on this show.

And I was like, what the hell am I doing? I'm doing it wrong. I could quit all of this chaos. I could quit running Dear Media. I could quit doing this show. I could quit dealing with the chaos of the world. I could just go of this chaos. I could quit running Dear Media. I could quit doing this show. I could quit dealing with the chaos of the world. I could just go deal with bees. Also bees, and she mentions this in the podcast,

there is so many benefits to taking Propolis and consuming the products that she's created. I just have to say, if you're going to start with one product, I would definitely start with the energy shots. They're these little tiny shots. I've been taking them during the day. She gave them to him the first time during this interview. Yeah. She said, we're not allowed to say this, but I'm just going to say it one more time.

They're kind of like a liquid Adderall. They like wake you up. Mine are not compliant. Listen, this really is a great interview. It's got everything you want from an entrepreneurial story. It's got a great person at the helm of that, which is Carly. It gives inspiration for people that are thinking about leaving their jobs or trying something new. It really packs a punch. I'm not kidding. It's one of my favorite episodes that we've ever done.

And Carly's a rock star. And also just to really hit your point home, Cameron Diaz is an investor. So if Cameron Diaz is an investor, she knows her shit when it comes to wellness. She is obsessed with this product. And I do think Michael should become a beekeeper. That would get you out of my hair. I feel like it's a great therapeutic way for you to unwind, beat your meat and raise some bees. Yeah. And instead of wearing those baggy sweats, you could just get a beekeeper suit and just really like solidify the whole deal. I'm wearing my pajamas. By the way, I should say the shot that I was talking about, if you're going to get it, is the BLXR Brain Fuel. That's the one I'm obsessed with.

Yeah. Well, I just introduced Carly. She's obviously the founder, CEO of Beekeepers Natural. She's got an incredible story. With that, I'll let you guys decide for yourself. Carly, welcome to Skinny Confidential, him and her show. This is the Skinny Confidential, him and her. All right, Carly. So I was telling you, my dad, he's 76 years old. I think I said 67 because I'm dyslexic and I fucked it up in the beginning, but he's 76 and he came to Austin the other day and he's like, hey, have you ever heard of this beekeeper stuff? And he had it in his hand and he's carrying this. And I was like, yes, of course. But he swears by it. And I was so surprised because like this guy-

He doesn't eat healthy. He told me that Diet Coke's healthier than orange juice. This guy is like the poster child for Diet Pepsi. And he's like showing me the beekeepers. I'm like, on one hand, super like poster child for Pepsi. On the other hand, beekeepers. He's an influencer. I love that.

That's our goal, like is really giving people tools to stay well and going beyond the sort of like elitist aspects of the wellness community and just sort of reshaping medicine. So that is sort of mission accomplished there. I love that. He's being converted. Perfect. I want to go way back to 2012 when you were visiting Italy. Tell us about that. Yeah. So I did a semester abroad when I was in college and I'm autoimmune. And growing up, I had chronic tonsillitis. So I don't know if either of you have had tonsillitis before. It feels similar. I guess the closest thing would be like strep throat. It's just really painful. And because of my autoimmune, I can't take antibiotics. So I grew up in this situation.

No, it's pretty risky. So I couldn't get my tonsils out because of that. And I was always sick. And when I was in college, I did a semester abroad and I like busted my butt waitressing to get out there. And it was this whole big thing. And of course, when I landed in Florence, I got very severe tonsillitis. So I was having a hard time breathing and I was basically going to have to come home because I didn't know what else to do. And at that point I was just like, no, I'm not missing out on another thing and I'm going to find a solution. And so I went into a pharmacy in Florence and I spoke to the pharmacist, gave her my laundry list of allergies

and my whole issue. And she looked at me like I was crazy. And she's like, oh, you need Propolis. And I was like, okay, what's that? And she's like, you know, the bees. And I was like, so honey? And she's like, no, no, no, completely different thing. Propolis. This is what you need. She told me how to take it. I bought this little bottle and I started using it. And in five days, I made a full recovery. And that had never happened to me before. So what is Propolis exactly? Yeah. So maybe I'll give you guys like a B101 really quick. Yeah. A B101. I don't think we ever had a B101.

No, I want a B101. Give me all the details about the bees. Okay. I'm going to break it down how the bees use it in the hive and then how it can help us. So I'll start with honey. We all know and love honey, full of antioxidants. It's really great for relaxation. It's actually really good to have honey before bed. For the bees, honey is their main food source. It's their carbs.

It's their energy source. And they collect the base materials from flowers. So they collect floral nectars, bring it to the hive, let it ferment and have honey that we all know and love. So it's the food of the hive. Propolis is the medicine of the hive. So while honey, the base ingredient is flowers, floral nectars, the base ingredient for propolis is plant and tree resins. So think of like sap from a tree as the base ingredient. So how the bees use it, they collect the plant and tree resins, mix it with their enzymes, and they create this amber colored substance that they use to line

the entire hive to keep it germ free. And it's literally how they defend themselves against germs and pathogens. And then for humans, propolis has over 300 beneficial compounds. It's an immune booster. It's antiviral, antifungal, antimicrobial, anti-inflammatory. So the same way it's used sort of to protect the hive, we can use it to protect ourselves to help to recover quickly if we do get sick and help to prevent and protect in the first place. So propolis is the medicine of the hive and my favorite thing ever because it changed my life. And then royal jelly is another big one that people are very confused by. So royal jelly, you can think of as the brain food of the hive or the superfood. It's given to newborn baby bees for the first few days of development,

the same way our babies get breast milk. And for humans, royal jelly has been used for everything from hormonal balance to supporting energy levels. But Western science has really focused on its effects on the brain. So it's great for focus, memory, concentration. And then bee pollen is the bee's protein source. And for humans, you can think of it as like a broad spectrum multivitamin. It's full of enzymes. It's amazing for boosting energy levels.

And there's some protein in it. Wow. I've been sneaking royal jelly and bee pollen in your smoothie since 2012. I love it. So how did we figure all this stuff out, I guess? What is propolis used in before? I mean, it sounds like you were able to get it in Italy, but what else had we humans been using it for? So it's really interesting. The first recorded human use of propolis dates back to 300 BC. It's not new. Like this is, a lot of people talk about propolis as the OG antibiotic. Because this is really what we were using in different cultures

before we kind of moved to some of the medicinal tools that we use today. But yeah, in other parts of the world, it's very well known. In North America, it's really lost on us. And if you look at just our relationship with honeybees, honeybees were brought over to North America by European settlers, and they were mostly used for honey and pollination. And so people just stopped using things like royal jelly and propolis or didn't know that they could. And in other parts of the world, these things are common. Like if you look at Korean skincare, propolis is in everything because of its anti-inflammatory effects and, you know, royal jelly is being used a lot for anti-aging. And in Europe, this stuff was like very available,

every pharmacy and not like Erewhon health food stores, but every just like basic pharmacy. For the most part, I was able to find propolis for immune support. And no doctor here ever recommended it for the condition? No, no one ever recommended it at all. Or even told you about it? That doesn't surprise me though. No, I had no idea it existed. So it's fair to say if you wouldn't have gone to Florence and discovered this, well, one, we probably wouldn't be sitting here doing this, but two, you would still be suffering from

a illness. 100%. I mean, i hope i would have found a solution but i imagine i still would have been suffering and i would have been i would be living living a very different life can you walk us through the benefits and the micro benefits of of bee pollen royal jelly and propolis like little random facts that maybe we don't know that it helps with. Yeah. So Propolis is really the immune booster of the hive. So right now, like with COVID, we've seen so much adoption of Propolis and we're starting to see, you know, more of these famous practitioners and doctors who have a following, people like Dr.

Mark Hyman, being very vocal about Propolis and how it can be used as a tool on a regular basis to just support your immune health. So it's been an interesting time to kind of see how Propolis is becoming mainstream. So yeah, I like to think of it as the immune booster. It's also so good for inflammation. So I use it every single day for a few reasons, but inflammation is a really big one for me. It's full of antioxidants. It's got more antioxidants than blueberries, according to the ORAC chart. And it's really great because it tends to work really well with your system, the same way adaptogens work with your system. Propolis and B products are immunomodulatory agents, so they work really nicely with your immune system. So for people who are autoimmune like me, they don't blow up and have

a crazy reaction with propolis the way they may with other immune boosting tools. So that's propolis. And then royal jelly. So I mentioned that it's really good for the brain. It contains these two fatty acids that are only naturally occurring in royal jelly. One's called 10-HDA and the other is called AMP-N1 oxide. And they basically promote brain-derived nootropic factor. So they act as a catalyst for neurogenesis, which is a lot of science-y words for saying they help your brain to create new, clean, fresh neurons. So this is a process that slows down with aging. It can be impaired by stress, by carcinogens, a variety of things.

So a lot of people will use royal jelly for memory, brain fog, concentration, that sort of thing. And then pollen, for me, I use it as nature's multivitamin. I don't love taking... It's funny because I make supplements, but I don't trust most supplements given my experience growing up. And pollen, it's super bioavailable, broad spectrum vitamins and minerals. There has actually been studies that found that taking bee pollen improves your endurance.

So it's a really great thing to have as like your fuel up smoothie before a workout. I do a teaspoon of bee powered before I work out all the time. So those are sort of some of the less known benefits of these bee products. I am about to rock your world. So if you haven't noticed, I'm all about peace of mind lately and doing things to calm anxiety. I feel like with everything going on in the world, anxiety is happening. So let me introduce you to Hush. Okay, they're a sleep brand. I am absolutely obsessed with their weighted blanket. I am telling you, it is life-changing for anxiety. Not only does it help me sleep better, it also gives me this really deep, peaceful, zen

sleep. And the weight of the blanket really helps with my stress and anxiety. It is so comfortable and so fuzzy. The one that I like the best is the throw in the lunar gray. It weighs eight pounds and it's perfect for lounging on the couch or even in bed. We like to use ours in bed because I do feel like the sleep that you get from it is so amazing. And just to get micro with you on the blanket, the inner weighted blanket is made of a super comfortable microfiber material, which means you can sleep directly under it. And then the inside of the actual blanket is non-toxic. So it's this non-toxic glass sand, which adds

weight and flexibility, and you can wrap it around you in this warm embrace. It's a one size fits all, so no weight or size selection is needed. Super easy. The blanket cover is dual sided for ultimate comfort, and they also have other things for sleep like pillows and sheets, an eye mask, all kinds of goodies. I just feel like at the end of the night when I've had a lot of stress and anxiety, I can go under my blanket and I know the weight of it is just going to relax me. Most of the research shows that it's a similar benefit to deep pressure therapy, and it's shown positive results for several conditions, including ADHD and anxiety. And basically what it does is it helps calm a restless body, which reduces feelings of anxiety and improves your sleep troubles. If you need some more Zen in your life, you need to check out Hush. They have a give back program.

They donate one in 10 adult blankets and one in five kids blankets to charities and shelters in need, which is why I'm so excited to partner with them. And also you should know they have a hundred night guarantee. You have a hundred nights to test out your blanket. If you don't love it, send it back to them for a full refund. No questions asked. You are going to go and use code skinny for 10% off all items. I highly recommend checking out the throw in lunar gray. Like I said, it weighs eight pounds and it gives me the most delicious, comfortable sleep. And how do you use the three products in front of me together? I just had the honey lozen. Lawson, how do you say that? Lozen gins. Lozen gins. How do you say it? I don't know. We're probably butchering it. I mess that word up all the time. Lozen gins.

Lozen gins. I'm just not going to try to say it. And it was so good. But how do you use all these three products together to support your immune system? Yeah. So the Propolis I spray pretty much all day, every day. Recommended is three to five sprays a day. I go way over that. And Propolis for me is really what stabilized my immune system. It's the reason I still have my tonsils and don't have tonsillitis. And it's the reason I don't really get sick anymore. Can you overdo it? Can you take too much? So the studies found toxicity equivalent to drinking 200 bottles. And that's if you're the size of a rat. So I think we're all good. So no is the answer. Yeah. So propolis, I just, I'm spraying that all the time. The lozenges, I'll usually have, we just launched those.

So it's pretty new, but over the R&D process, I've just been like going through them. But I'm now having maybe three or four of those a day. And those are really great because if you think about lozenges on the market, it's like Halls and Ricola. And then even on the natural side, it's full of like cane sugar. And there's just not a lot of medicinal ingredients. Yeah, it's crap. Now they're never going to sponsor the show.

Fuck that up. But yeah. It's candy. It's candy. So the lozenges we made, and this is, you know, before we started recording, I was telling you how long it's taken me to make them. They have propolis in them, zinc, vitamin D, no refined sugar. They're really clean. So they're made so you can really take them to find relief

whenever. And then if you don't have a sore throat, you can still take them to help support your overall immune health. So I'm having a few of those a day. Bee Powered, which is our superfood honey. So that's a honey that has all of the superfoods from the hive in one in medicinal grade dosages. I built that because I was learning a lot about manuka and I was like, okay, this is overpriced and I can make something better. And so Be Powered, I do a teaspoon every morning. And then pollen, I put on my smoothie. I'll put it on like avocado toast. I put it on everything. The Be Smart, that's for... That's the brain shot. Yeah.

So Beelixer, we just changed the name from Beelixer to Be Smart with our rebrand. So Be Smart, I use... I took one before we started recording, but I use any time I need to kind of be in the zone. My friends call that one liquid Adderall. I'm probably not supposed to say that. But it's really great for focused memory concentration. And that's what I use. I try not to have like coffee in the afternoon and I am a major workaholic. And so

I just take those in the afternoon, helps me. I kind of sit down and then I get up hours later and I'm like, okay, I've done a lot. Like it just gets me in the zone. You probably can't say anything, but let's just talk in general terms. COVID. Have you heard anyone using this if they have COVID? Quite a lot. And we did something interesting at the start of the pandemic. So we were just like a lot of companies trying to figure out how we can support first responders.

And so we created this discount for first responders. We now opened it up. We've now opened it up to like anyone on the front line. So front line workers, anyone. And we didn't just like issue a discount code online. We let our network know that we have a discount code in order to get it. It's for 50% off. You have to email the company with a bio, show that you're actually a practitioner, and then we'll give it to you. And so I was like, I didn't really know what would come of that. My team thought it would be fine, but I was like, guys, doctors and nurses and first responders are busy. Is anyone going to take the time to do this? And we have had thousands of practitioners, first responders all over North America. Like at one point,

I think it got to like the HR department of like a San Diego hospital and everyone was ordering it. And it's been really cool because they've sent in testimonials. And these are people from a Western background who are really benefiting from these products. What about allergies? And Austin, I know there's something called cedar fever. Have you seen this helping with anything like that? Propolis is amazing for allergies. So propolis actually reduces your histamine response. It's anti-inflammatory, so it's really helpful. So if I, my friend Weston was staying with us for a little bit and he brought his cat whose name is Winston. So Weston and Winston were staying with us and I was a mess. If I had had this at the time, it would have helped.

Definitely. Propolis is really great for allergies. It's really interesting because sort of like an old tale to use local bee products because, you know, in the olden days, if you use local bee products, you'd be exposing yourself to local foliage and like microdosing with the allergen and reducing your allergic response. But today, local farms, for the most part, are not like free flowing with different local plants. They're sort of focused. It's more economical to be like a blueberry grower or an avocado grower. There's not just this variance. And so local bee products today don't necessarily mean that they have the allergy benefits. They still are super beneficial,

but they're not giving you the allergy benefits in the way that you think because you're not microdosing with the varied plant life that may be causing your allergies. So I always tell people rather than go for honey for allergies allergies go for propolis because whether you get propolis from Japan or North America it's going to be really powerful when it comes to inflammation and it's going to reduce the histamine response you got to try that bee shot I just tried it I just gave you one no it's so good I'm really really really impressed with that I use the spray all the time but today is the first day that I've tried the Be Smart and the lozenges or however you say it. And they're both amazing.

I got to get on Ari because Ari, you haven't sent this to me yet. I haven't seen this and I should have taken this before. I would have been much smarter. Take it right now. I would have been way smarter on this podcast if I took this. Take it right now. We need you to be smarter. I had a side question. Speaking of allergies, and you're the person to ask, I think, bees, why do people have such extreme, like some people have such extreme allergic reaction to bees? Yeah. So that's bee venom. And some people have it. You can actually go through a program where you get stung with a doctor on a regular basis, and that can

reduce the allergic response. But just because you're allergic to bee venom doesn't mean you're allergic to honey or bee propolis or royal jelly. All these different things have a very different profile. If you are seriously allergic to bee venom, I always recommend ask your doctor just to be safe how you're going to tolerate other bee products. But bee venom is its own different compound. Bees are kind of bossy. Bees are like, bees are, I get the saying queen bee. They're queen.

Yeah. I mean, it's a lot of benefits. It's a matriarchal society. They're, it's really cool because you don't see this that often. We're seeing it more and more. But in the animal world, it's a society that's just like completely run by the female creatures. So there's the queen bee who like runs everything and then all the worker bees who get everything done who literally do everything from like foraging for

pollen and nectar and all these things to being bouncers at the front of the hive to make sure that intruders don't come in those are all women and then there's male bees called the drone and the drone's job is literally to mate with the queen and after that he dies like in flight they have sex and then he will die and then all of when it comes to like winter. So he only gets to get it off once. One time. That's kind of a miserable existence I mean at least he I mean at least. So he beats his meat in the queen and just passes out. Yeah, exactly. And then she actually like rips his dick off.

It's kind of... Oh my God. It's kind of a turn on in a way. And then it's interesting when it comes to like winter for hibernation, the bees will kick out all or the worker bees, the female bees will kick out all the drones because they're just a drain on resources. Like they're not doing anything.

So after the queen's mated, if it's hibernation time, if it's winter, they literally get like thrown out to die. We're going to, we've like, we're saying all this smart stuff on the podcast and I can only see the headline, like podcast hosts excited about Dick being ripped off by pain. Sorry, we're going to go on a tangent. Speaking of being the queen bee, you are a female founded company and i'm sure this has not been easy to build so i would like to go back to when you started this journey what were some of the struggles in the beginning that you look back on that you were like shit so i had a lot of challenge starting this company and I took a very indirect path here. So

I started after my time abroad, I started beekeeping. When I came back to finish up college, I became, if you can't tell, obsessed with the bees. I still am. And I was just like a hobbyist beekeeper. Did you get stung a lot? Oh, all the time. I'll show you a picture after this. My face looks crazy. Can we have it for the podcast? Can we put it on the podcast? Yeah, it's wild looking. It's going to scare people. Why don't you wear the podcast? Can we put it on the podcast? Yeah, it's wild looking. It's going to scare people. Why don't you wear the suit? Oh, I just don't always

be keep with a suit on and the reason I got stung like crazy is because I had hair product in that pissed the bees off because they communicate one of the ways

they communicate is through scent. Oh, Michael's would really piss the bees off. He has so many products on. I can't get close to the hive. Your paste would piss those bees off.

That queen would rip your dick off. Yeah. I kind of stuck my face in there too. It was fully my fault, but I've been stung before. This whole thing? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I started beekeeping in college. Now it's like a cool hipster thing. In 2012, when I started beekeeping, my friends were like, I'm sorry, what are you doing? It was so weird. I remember I had my beekeepers uniform, cheerleading uniform in the same bag. And one of my friends went into my bag and pulls out this white hazmat suit. And she's like, do you need to tell me something? Why? What is this? And so it was just like very,

very weird to everyone. Oh my God. Cheerleading outfit with your beekeeping suit. So now it's a thing to do is to be a beekeeper. What do you mean? When my daughter gets older, I might need to send me that beekeeper suit. I can do that. That will help you. Now it's hipster and it's great. The more, I want more beekeepers to come out into the environment. We need more people creating a clean, safe habitat for bees. This may be a stupid question. I think I would be very relaxed beekeeping. I actually think you'd be good at it.

James Hetfield from Metallica is a big beekeeper. Yeah, it's a lot of people do. It's very meditative. I love it because it's the one place where I can just kind of like calm down. You hear the hum of the hive. You're in nature. Can they sting you in the suit? No, they can't sting through the suit.

Lauren wanted to get this chicken coop, but I know she's not going to take care of it. So I said, you can't do that. No, you won't. Get a hive. Get a hive. Yeah, maybe just get the hive instead. Someone can help you manage it. I don't know about me around bees.

I don't know. I don't know if that's a good mixture. I'm a little bit oblivious when it comes to stuff like that. Honestly, if this deer media thing doesn't work out, I might just go become a beekeeper. I'm about there.

Okay, but I have kind of a stupid question. Do bees have personalities? This is such a dreamy product, especially if you are at home, okay? I talked about this before, but Olive and June has this situation called the Manny system, and it truly is the answer to salon perfect nails at home. So when quarantine first started, obviously nothing was open and I discovered this Manny system. And basically you can do your nails at home. My problem has always been that I can't do the other hand. I remember when I was in high school, I would try to paint both hands and it would look like I had white out all over my fingers because

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This is the new us. Let's do this. So the queen can have a personality that dictates the environment of the hive. So I've had like a bratty queen before and it riles the hive up. And I've had to like place her in a new before and it riles the hive up. And I've had to like place her in a new hive and requeen the hive and that sort of thing. You requeen the hive? It's just sending her to a new household and getting another queen in there.

Oh my God. Letting them create another queen. So the queen has a personality. Totally. I love that. Okay, so you're beekeeping and then what? Yeah, so I'm beekeeping. I never thought I would become a beekeeper. That was not in my vocabulary.

Either did I, but look, here I am. It's true. It's going to happen now. And I thought I was going to go into pharmaceutical research. I've always liked sciences. I never saw myself as a doctor. And from an early age, I had to do a ton of research on everything. So I thought that's what I would go into.

But then I started beekeeping and it was my final year of college and I was making all these products. And I had this dream of starting a company around it. But I also was very fortunate. I had a good job offer out of school at this hedge fund to join them as a pharmaceutical researcher. And everyone was like, why would you not do that? That's insane. So I didn't have the confidence at the time to go against that. I was graduating like most college kids with negative funds. So I took this good finance job and I was there for about 10 months. And then 10 months into that, I got recruited by Goldman Sachs and I joined them as an equity and derivatives trader. And that was like the beginning of the end of my mental health. I heard this from so many people. Can you talk

about that? It was a really tough environment. So there's a lot of good that came out of that experience, my work ethic, just what I kind of had to learn about and navigate. And I have a ton of friends that are still at Goldman Loving Life. But for me, I never cared about finance ever. I never even took a business course or a finance course. And I just wasn't driven by that. And I was also on a really tough team. So the trading floor generally, at the time I was there, there were 300 traders. Under 15 were female. I was one of them. What year was this? Sorry. This is 2014. Okay.

Yeah. And I was on a specific team where, you know, due to a lot of factors, my gender, my age, my performance, I had a target on my back. I was really threatening to someone who was senior toers. Again, I was on a team that like, it just was really a tough situation for me and I was really unhappy. And so I did something I'm good at, which is making a spreadsheet. And I made a spreadsheet about my happiness, trying to figure out like, when was I the happiest in my life? And the things that I kept coming back to- Can you get micro on that spreadsheet and what actually goes into a spreadsheet? I don't think I've ever heard someone- Yeah. So I basically was just looking at periods, points in time in my life and different activities that I did for some, I can't remember the time period, but for a specific defined time period and how fulfilled I felt by these activities. And the two things that were

massive for me were beekeeping, which at the time I was living between, I was splitting time between New York and Toronto. I couldn't keep bees. So did you just literally like make a year, like the year and then the activity in the year? And then like- I did it. I did it for the past three, previous three years. And then was it like a scale of one to 10? That's very you. Well, no, the reason I'm interested, I think one thing we talk about a lot on the show, and I don't want to sidetrack you at all, but a lot of people are trying to find their purpose. And it sounds like this is something that helped you find your purpose. A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And that's why I mentioned the exercise itself.

It was like you did this. So on one sheet, it was like the year, the activities, and then- Yeah, stability of the activity. So looking at, did I persist or was it just like a one-off fun thing? All of these different metrics and the two things were beekeeping and building products and so the beekeeping I couldn't do I could order some basic lab equipment to my studio apartment in New York and play mad scientist and order bulk bee product from my mentor out in British Columbia and start making these products and I wasn't I don't know if I was like too insecure or just too, like, I didn't want to put a label on it. I wasn't thinking like, this is my side business.

This is going to be something I was like, this is my hobby. And the same way you, someone maybe has a friend who's really good at baking, who brings them cookies for Christmas, I'll bring people bee products and it'll be fine. And so I started doing that on the side and on weekends going to farmer's markets and I was selling out. Wow. So you're selling out of farmer's markets. How do you take that with creating a deck

to having Cameron Diaz involved, to having, I think, a lot of different, very amazing entrepreneurs involved to where it is now. Yeah. So it was an amazing time because I had no pressure. I wasn't even calling it a company. It was just something I loved. I was able to amass this meaningful customer base just because the products were working for them. And I started to realize like there's an opportunity here and I can help people. And there's other people who are probably going through the health issues I went through. And there's also, it's just the reality that like everyone deserves to feel well. And we have a lot of tools, but we have

tools that are very polarizing. It's, you know, our healthcare model generally is one size fits all and that shouldn't be the case. And I've stumbled upon something that could actually really help people. And so I started to fantasize about leaving Goldman to start this business. And I ran it by a few of my mentors and people I look up to. And across the board, everyone was like, that is the stupidest thing I have ever heard. If you leave Goldman Sachs to pursue this weird B medicine company, you will wind up in your parents' basement, like sit down, keep your mouth closed, stay the course. You're on a good path at Goldman. Who is telling you this? They got to go.

One of my bosses at Goldman, he literally took me into a boardroom and broke down for me what my financial outcome would be if I pursued this stupid project versus if I made partner at Goldman. And I was like, it was actually in that moment, I was sitting there and I was like, I'm 26 years old. You know that I've been treated like absolute shit on this team. You know what I've gone through here. And you're telling me that there is certainty that I'm going to fail at this path. I don't want to be anything like you, and you got to be in a pretty sad place or justifying something really aggressively that you regret to do that.

And that was my moment where I was like, yeah, I'm done. There's something in that. Can you tell us a story of how you were treated shitty? Give me an example. Give us their names. As a trader, you're meant to spend a lot of time with were treated shitty. Like give me an example. Give us their names. As a trader, you're meant to spend a lot of time with the clients of Goldman. And so I had this client who was like a really big hedge fund person who we went out to a work event and he was incredibly inappropriate with me. And I addressed it. And then I was kind of like, you know, Goldman

has really evolved. It's not like this anymore. And I don't believe it's like this anymore. And it's also you're really sort of split into different teams. So my experience had a lot to do with the specific people I was reporting into. So that situation wasn't really handled. And then I had other situations which were kind of the reverse of that, where I really hit it off with certain clients. And, you know, like one of the clients I can think of, he had a daughter around my age and he just thought I was like a badass and he sent me a lot of trades and how it works on the team I was on. It's very commission based. So all of a sudden I'm like a massive revenue generator for my whole team. And that when I start to outpace one of my bosses, all of a sudden he's got job security.

You outshine the master. Yeah. And so I started, I was sort of, that was the craziest thing. So I think I'm like crushing it. And all of a sudden I'm contacted by HR being told that I'm going rogue with clients. I don't even know what that means. And I was like blocked from certain client interactions, which cut my commission aggressively. And then there would be events that I was supposed blocked from certain client interactions, which cut my commission aggressively. And then there would be events that I was supposed to be at with clients where I'm like getting ready to go.

It's like after market close, it's 5 p.m. I'm doing like my end of day notes. And then someone on my team comes to me and he's like, oh yeah, that event tonight, I actually need you to do a deck for this big client and I need it by 4 a.m. tomorrow morning. And I was like, oh, cool, cool, cool. All nighter for me. And then like didn't even use the deck. And so that would happen all the time. And it was just it was just a really tough experience. I've heard a lot of women talk about how tough it is there. I've read a lot about everything that goes on there. And it seems like for women especially, it's difficult.

Yeah. And again, I think that is really changing. And I have a lot of friends who are still at Goldman and they have a real mandate to change that, which is great. But I had a really harsh experience. And then it was this weird thing because on the outside, I have this great job. Like if you're in New York working on Wall Street, you're seen to be successful. And I had more- So people are like, what are you complaining about? Yeah. I had more financial abundance than ever. I had a lot of my people who were senior to me be like, just because you're a girl, you're going to get promoted because we don't have enough of you,

like that sort of thing. So there was, I was so miserable and everyone around me was like, just because you're a girl, you're going to get promoted because we don't have enough of you. Like that sort of thing. So there was, I was so miserable and everyone around me was like, what the, what are you complaining about? Like suck it up. And then, you know, people would assume, oh, you, you can't handle the stressful environment. That's what it is. And I'm like, no, I'm good with handling stress. I don't like being treated like shit. I don't know why people think it's so commendable to work in a stressful environment. For me, I would never want to work in a stressful environment. And you bring it home with you.

You don't have peace of mind. Peace of mind is the most important thing in my life. I can't imagine going to work and being miserable and stressed all day. That sounds horrible. It's terrible. And there was so much at the time I thought social reward to being there. Like people recognized me as smart. When I said what my job, when I told people about my job, they were like, oh, you must be smart. And that was

completely feeding my insecurities. And I was keeping my, I felt really trapped. I was like super isolated at that time in my life. And that's why I made that spreadsheet because I was like, this just, something's got to give like this isn't working. So when you went in and your boss is trying to convince you not to do the business that you wanted to do, you had the epiphany. How quickly soon after did you leave? I believe it was like a couple of days. And so you leave. Are you like on the ground running? Like, are you preparing a deck? Are you getting investors? Are you trying to do it yourself? No, I was bootstrapping.

So literally, I blew up my life. I had this good on paper boyfriend. I had this whole life. And we are part of this New York finance world. And everyone just thought I was having a full mental breakdown. I now refer to it as my mental breakthrough. But I literally blew everything up. My close friends were supportive and just wanted me to be happy and could see the toll it

was taking. But most people thought it was across the board a bad decision and I was making bad decisions and being reckless. But what I did was I saved up. I had saved up some money from the Goldman time. And then I put all of the money that I had into this company to the point where I couldn't pay rent. And I moved into my best friend's apartment and lived of the money that I had into this company to the point where I couldn't pay rent. And I moved into my best friend's apartment and lived on the couch that stayed. I lived on his couch for a year. Shout out to Adam, who I shout out on every podcast ever. Hey, Adam. I want to hang out with Adam. He's the best. He's going to be a bridesmaid at our wedding. But anyways, it was a two bedroom apartment with four people living in it. And I literally had no money. Like I put

myself on a crazy food budget where I was just really having to track everything. And I put everything that I had into this company. And I just continued trying. I continued going to farmer's markets. I started going with a backpack to different sort of small mom and pop health food stores and asking them to sell my product on commission. This is such an inspiring story because you didn't take no for an answer. You went against the status quo. You did what you wanted to do and you just bootstrapped it. And now look what it is now. So after you started selling at the farmer's market, living on your best friend's couch, when do you start to realize, oh, I need investors? Or was that not until way later?

Or was there a time like this is actually something? That was the moment when I was like, this is actually something. Because there was a part of me that was still scared. And what I was doing was so... I mean, it still is very unconventional. We're just in the early days of teaching people about the benefits of Propolis and these different bee products. But I was really nervous. And I started from these mom and pop health food stores. The following grew. I started just like LinkedIn creeping and emailing every buyer of Whole Foods I could get. And it got to a point where someone was interested and they were reading reviews. I had set up a website and a big account reached out to me and I needed to fund a purchase order, which was a couple hundred thousand dollars

that I did not have. And that was a time where I was like, okay, I need to raise money, but I have meaningful sales. I have product market fit. I have like a customer, a big customer base with like success stories that I can turn to. And is this starting with just the throat spray? It started with just the throat spray. I was making like I love making products. So I had little different things I would bring to me to farmers markets and this and that. But the farmers markets were amazing because that was like my customer testing. Like I look back at it and I was like, that was the best customer testing feedback ever. You were Bethany in BevMo selling your skinny girl. But you were selling your throat spray at the farmer's market.

Pretty much. I love it. Oh, my God. Let me tell you about Versed. I love this skincare brand for multiple reasons, but what I love most is that it is affordable. It is the cleanest drugstore skincare brand that's out there. They're also vegan, sustainably minded, and hyper-focused on bringing you real results with proven ingredients that your bank account appreciates. I'm telling you guys their packaging is so chic. You want it on your Instagram. And one of the things they do that's super interesting is

they formulate to the highest standards in the world. So they banned over 1,350 plus toxins to ensure their products are safe. I really like the lip oil. I'm a huge fan. I think people don't realize how many wrinkles that you can get on your lips. So what I'll do, and this sounds so weird, is I'll brush my lips with an old toothbrush, just like a cheap, regular drugstore toothbrush. And then I'll apply the lip oil on top. And my lips are like pillowy and plump. I also like how it doesn't have color. So it's just like this really beautiful lip oil. And I'm telling you between the toothbrush and this oil together, it gives you like these plump, delicious, circulated lips. Another one that I would recommend you check out if you're an eye mask person,

they have this emergency eye mask. It's called the Fix. And I like to put that on in the morning just as like a little like oomph. I'll do a little eye mask and then you just wash it off and it's just like the most buttery, delicious eye mask. I'm a huge fan of their brand and if you're into good skin and clean products, this is one to check out. And you get 10% off for first-time users when you shop at firstskin.com with promo code skinny. First already offers skincare products that prices your bank account appreciates, and now they're giving you 10% off for first-time users, like I said, with promo code skinny. Available at verskin.com, spelled V-E-R-S-E-D-S-K-I-N.com with promo code skinny. Enjoy. were you bringing on investors for just capital or did you bring on strategic investors

so both originally i was just like oh my god i need capital and because of the reception i'd received when i told people i was leaving goldman to do this i was like no one's gonna believe this but then i reached out to my contacts a lot of them were from the finance world and explained what I was doing. And they were like, oh, yeah. And then a few of them were like, let me talk to my wife and see what she thinks. And then call me at like 12 midnight being like, oh, I just spoke to my wife and you need to do this. This is a good idea. We have this issue with our daughter. And so it was cool. I had this really great group of early investors who had different skill sets, who ended up being great mentors to me. A lot of them I really lean on to this day. Cameron Diaz, you did a live with her recently. She's obsessed with this product. I've seen her

talk about it everywhere. She is a huge fan. How did that happen? She's amazing. So it was really interesting. I had, I feel like I front loaded the hardship because people talk a lot about fundraising being challenging and women are underfunded period. We need more women getting financial backing and we need to make it easier for them. But I had people who were so aggressively against what I was doing at the start that when I went out there- Can you talk about the process of the actual, what some of those conversations looked like? It was really at the start when I was thinking about leaving Goldman for this. When I shopped this idea around, people honestly told me that the amount of things they told me were wrong with me was insane. And so by the time...

You personally, not the business. All of it. All of it. Well, they were trying to look out for me. They were like, you have this great thing. Just suck it up. Just stay there. And I had so much of that at the start that when I went out there to raise money, I was kind of like, say whatever you want. I know this is working. So you can get in or get out. This is a perfect example of what's best for you. Other people don't know what's best. You are the one that knows best for you. You have to listen to your intuition. Go on. Totally. So I started fundraising and, you know, smart people started to become interested. They

saw my sales and they were like, whoa, this is a one woman show and you've done this. Okay. And it's not that I'm extra talented. It's that our products work. And so that's really, that's kind of what happened there. And it started this, this story of this, like girl with the B medicine started to get told and it got to one of Cameron's financial advisors. And she is really into wellness generally. She has her book, which is amazing. And she's like, I want to meet this girl. And we really connected. We met at this like, I think we met at like a grocery store. I was so nervous. And I was also in between meetings. And the only time that I could meet her was at this like little grocery store that was around my house at the time called Forager's Market. And she came and she was like super chill. And we sat down and we were just talking about the trajectory of this business and how the

products work. And then she's like, I like this. Let me go use these products and have an experience and see if they work for me. And she did. And she came back and was like, this is legit and I want to be involved. And she's just been an incredibly supportive investor. Do you have any other strategic investors that you can shout out? Lily Collins. Love Lily. Love it. How did that happen? Similar thing. Lily was looking for investment opportunities, really interested in female founders and supporting them and has her own wellness experience and cares a lot about this world. And she started using the product. She was using our Propolis for a year before I met her. She was using the Propolis the whole time she was filming Emily in Paris. And it helped her stay well and it helped her not lose her voice and

just feel good. And when we opened the round, she was like, oh, I love these products. I want to be a part of it. And she's been amazing. That's so interesting that you say that because back in the day, I used to do auditions for plays. I remember this. And I was in CYT. I don't know if you know what that is. It's like a theater, not like a little, like in my town, tiny. And I remember all the really amazing singers would always be sucking on candy before they went on. So it makes total sense that actors and singers want to be a part of this because it does calm your throat. I feel like you need to get like Lady Gaga or someone who's constantly singing. Nas is another cool one who's an investor. He got involved. So I'm a huge fan. And so that I kind of like lost that, but I lost my mind over

that. This is not where I thought this was going, but this is rad. I love Nostra. But he got involved because he felt that wellness was really kind of one-sided. And the thing that he's really passionate about is bringing natural, cost-effective alternatives to different communities. And so for us, our products have all different price points, but we use premium ingredients. We do everything sustainably and we work really hard to not price people out. And our early conversations were like, hey, if this is available to people in this community where like wellness isn't a big conversation and it's like

$13, $14.99 and people can use this to stop having sick days and feel better, like it can really spark a revolution in health. And that's a massive part of our mission. What's something that you didn't know when you started this that you know now that you wish you knew? How fulfilled I would be by leading a team. Okay. What about something that's something that you maybe struggled with that now you don't struggle with? I mean, I was so insecure. I mean, I've always been a perfectionist. I've always been like under a certain grade is a fail and I need to be perfect and I need to get this right. And I'm not smart. I'm just like tricking everyone because I do extra time on my homework, all that

stuff. So I grew up with like this real need to be perfect, need to prove myself idea. And I never thought I myself in a position where I had no choice but to let go of that completely changed everything. So you changed your inner narrative? A hundred percent. And it's still something that I work on every day. I want to talk about it more. We were just, right before we started doing this interview, we were in another interview talking about people that are perfectionists and how it really like ultimately holds that individual back. What were some of the things that you did to get past some of those feelings? So, I mean, I put myself in a position where it really was do or die. And I put myself in a position, I sort of set myself up for success in that I took the time to really think about what

I care about, what gives me purpose, what problems in this world do I want to solve? And then I went after them. And doing that takes the pressure off to some degree because it goes from how is this external thing going to reflect upon me? How is like the success of this going to make me look to this is a problem that needs to be solved in the world. And either I'm going to have a hand in it or I'm going to try really, really hard and fail at having a hand in it. But I'm trying to solve it. So just sort of removing yourself a little bit and making it more about what you can contribute really took the pressure off me in a big way. What's your daily routine? We always talk about routines on this podcast.

I would love to know how you start your morning. Are you methodical and planned out about it or is it just kind of you just wake up and start working? And I would love to know how you wind down. Yeah. So I try to be methodical about it. And someday it depends what's happening at work. Sometimes it's just like crazy and can't do my morning routine and everyone around me can notice that. But what I try to do is journal every morning. I like to write. I have a lot of ideas and information in my head at all times. So getting it out of me onto a page is just a huge way for me to kind of disassociate from outcomes and think things through. So I try to write maybe two to three pages a day, just sort of freeform write. If I'm really feeling kind of blocked,

I'll write letter. I started doing this recently, writing letters to my anxiety or a letter to my fear, something like that. If something's really blocking me and that's really helpful. So I do that every morning. I don't know if you guys are familiar with the Hoffman process, but I do Hoffman quad check, which is like checking in with different parts of yourself. A lot of people swear by that. What's that? I've never heard of that. How have I never heard of that? No, we talked about it and it didn't recently just burn down. Yeah.

You've done too many podcasts, Lauren. We talked about it. No. Can you tell me about it? I don't know. Yeah. So the Hoffman process, it's this organization that tries to help people really kind of undo the patterns that we've grown up with. Did you actually go to Hoffman? Yeah, yeah. I did a week at Hoffman. It was awesome. I went in being like, okay, a lot of smart people have told me this is a good idea. I don't have a lot of work-life balance. When I got there, I was super pissed off because I knew that you had to turn in your phone.

I knew that, which was hard for me for seven days. But I I brought I'm not joking like a suitcase of books wait is this what Katy Perry did yeah Katy did it and also yeah we talked about it with Jen Adkin okay yes yeah I didn't realize it was called it go ahead yeah Jen Jen is a big Hoffman person okay she's amazing tell me what you do so you have to give your phone you have to give your phone and then I went with all these books because I was like, great, like I'll catch up on stuff. I'll do some reading. And they're like, yeah, you can't read. You can't have any distractions.

And you just go through. And I can't really tell you what specifically happens, but it's basically this, it's like really intense therapy in a group setting. It's a lot of people from different backgrounds. A lot of them happen to be high performers. You can't talk about what you do either. So you can't network. I mean, you can't. Oh, no, yeah. No, no, performers. You can't talk about what you do either. So you can't network.

I mean, you can't. Oh, no, yeah. No, no, no. You can't talk about what you do until the end. People say, and tell me this is wrong. The people that have told me about it, say you like kind of in a weird way, like reconnect with your childhood. Totally. For me, I really reconnected with my childhood and I began to understand the origins of thought patterns and behaviors that just weren't serving me that I've seen as toxic that hold me back. I started to see the origins and then I was able to kind of let them go. Do you really think it helped so much like looking back like you think it was life-changing? I do. I think it was life-changing. I think that with introspection, with therapy, with whatever sort of form you want to take that introspection, you can solve a lot of this

yourself. We all have bad habits. We all have patterns. And I think one of the big takeaways for me was we're not our patterns. Being late could be a pattern. You see yourself as late. Me too. But what's the stuff like what's the mental dialogue that comes with that idea like I'm late is it I'm sloppy I don't respect other people's time like all of these sort of side subconscious ideas we have about that and so just getting sort of aware of your patterns where they come from and then it empowers you to make the choice like do I want to define myself as being this sort of person? Or, you know, maybe that's the way I've behaved for a long time.

And I don't want to define myself by that anymore. And I can stop behaving like that. And thus, I'm not that. And so it's really an empowering process. So what are some things that you went in with besides being late? Like you said you were insecure. What are some little things that you went in with and then you came out with?

Yeah, so really critical of myself. It's so funny because I'm like a super, I couldn't be less judgmental with my friends or people in my life. And I'm so judgmental of myself. Like it's wild. I'm still a little bit like this, but I'm getting better

and I have an amazing team around me. So they help. But if something isn't perfect, I will stay up all night trying to fix it do you agree with this no comment it's a problem I'm so hard on myself I can relate to that I think I'm similar in that way we're like no I always tell people like nobody's ever going to be harder on me than I am on myself. Yeah. That's why whenever he does something wrong, like he has been feeding my, our chihuahuas for the last 13 years. And last night we went out to a 5 PM dinner and he forgot to feed our chihuahua Boone. And Boone woke up in the middle of the night and he was licking me and like trying to wake me up. We thought he had to go to the bathroom.

He figured out he forgot to feed him. You were hard on yourself because i said i couldn't even be mad at you like it was like you did it all for me yeah yeah i felt bad he's crying about it right now he's tearing up that's just so upset in 13 years he's fed the dog in the morning and the night he missed one day it was an accident i feel worse about not feeding the dog than i do like my child because the dog the child will figure it out somehow the dog the dog stuck. He can't open the fridge or do anything. Maybe the one year old won't figure it out, but you know what I mean? I think that's a minor example, but I think if I screw up in anything, no matter if the criticism is one thing, but I will be tough on myself. I don't know what that's from. Maybe I gotta go do Hoffman. Who knows? Yeah. I think

you can find a lot of stuff from Hoffman, But so many of us have that where we take sort of one external moment and take it to like tell us who we are. And that can be really, really toxic. It can be really self-defeating, really limiting. And so I'm really hard on myself. I'm not really great with work-life balance, all these things. And the catalyst for me going to Hoffman was just like, I was really stressed and I didn't need to be that stressed because I had hired a team at that point and I just like still wasn't delegating. And I ended up finding a lot more

from that experience. But it's really about stopping this structure, this like schema we have about the world and how we like super associate with outcomes or patterns or like a particular behavior and point in time and are able to just like move forward from it. So what advice would you give to someone who say we're going through COVID, they have an idea like yours, maybe they're getting pushback from family or friends. What advice would you tell them? Okay, so the first thing is starting a business is as you guys know really hard it is and you have to like I feel like entrepreneurship is so sexy now which is ridiculous because you work like I work my ass off and I love it and I am the happiest I've ever been in my life but you

have to really love your baby like if you're gonna this company, it has to be something that you are really committed to. It's not just like, in my opinion, I don't think you're going to have the best experience if you're just like, billion dollar idea. I'm going to make it happen. I'm going to flip it. People do have positive experiences in that area all the time. Rarely though. Yeah. Yeah. But they definitely don't have the level of fulfillment that is attainable if you're really thoughtfully choosing something you care about. So my first piece of advice is like, for me, it was a happiness spreadsheet and then like going through hell for a while in a toxic

work situation that brought me there. But really get clear on what it is you want and what's going to make you feel fulfilled. And then from there, create a plan. Like, yes, I just sort of was out of Goldman and doing this thing, but it wasn't really like that because prior to leaving Goldman, I was making this stuff in my apartment for months. I was going to farmer's markets. I had customer feedback. I had feedback on what price points are working for people. I had an idea and you never really have any idea, but I had done the testing and put in the work in the little ways that I had accessible to me to be able to make focus next steps. How many years has this been now?

Really 2017. Before that, I was kind of like low-key farmer's market. But like when you're doing, I'm saying like from the time you got into bees, farmer's market, making your own stuff out of your apartment. Like, cause I think that all counts and people see this result, right? They're like, oh, that was quick. But I'm talking about like- A hundred percent.

So people see the company and they see it as like something that launched in 2017 and is this like overnight success. I really started doing this in 2012. Like in 2012, that's when I hit rock bottom with my illness. That's when I started beekeeping and found a love there. That's when I started, I was a TA for my chemistry class in college. So I was making all these products. That's when I started really doing this. And it took me a lot of time and self-work and different experiences to dive in. Well, I think it's important for people to

hear because like that's almost 10 years, right? And that's another problem is people want these things and they want them right now. And if you don't really love something, I don't think you can, if you didn't love this, you could not have done this for 10 years. There's no way. No chance. You mentioned you do Hoffman in the morning. What does that look like? Yeah. So I do the quad check-in. That's what it's called. There's a Hoffman app. So for people who didn't go to the Hoffman process, you can still, and their Instagram too, they lead this over like a meditation thing on, they do it on lives every day. But I like to use the app because I like to write things down. And it basically asks you, it has you check in with the different

components of who you are. So your emotional self, how do I feel? What do I need today? My intellectual self, how do I feel? What do I need today? My body, how do I feel? What do I need today? And then higher self, which is like your spiritual self or evolved self or whatever you want to call it, the best version of you. And it's what's one word that describes how I'm feeling right now and what's sort of the advice or feedback. So I write that every morning and sometimes it's like a word per each one. Sometimes I'm like, I sit down with like five minutes

thinking I'm just going to write a word and all of a sudden I've written like six paragraphs. I love it. I need to try that. The Hoffman app. So the moral of the story is if you become a beekeeper, you'll create a massively successful business.

You'll be super healthy. I want Carly to tell us how we can all be more like the queen bee. I think the moral of the story is really be thoughtful about finding your purpose and really be kind to yourself in giving yourself the tools, whether that's going to Hoffman or journaling or whatever it is, to get yourself into a place where you can be kind and patient enough with yourself to let yourself get there. To be the queen bee, to cut the penis off. Exactly. Don't get any ideas. Where is or

what is a book or resource or podcast that you turn to that you think would bring our audience value? Yeah. So in the beginning, I did a lot of reading podcasting just to try to learn about business because I was like, yeah, I'm coming from finance, but like, I don't know how to start a business. And a podcast that I really learned a lot from is Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders. I think it's the Stanford Business School podcast, and they just have different entrepreneurs on, but they have really candid conversations. Like I love how I built this, but when I listen to entrepreneurial thought leaders, I feel like I get more takeaways and ideas versus the kind of inspiration that I get from how I built this. So that's a really good one. I'm going to listen to that. Entrepreneurial

thought leaders. Where can everyone find you? Where can they shop the bees? And if they're going to start with one, which one would they start with? Do you recommend they start with? So I say Propolis just because it's a good overall immune booster, protector. It's safe to use on a regular basis. You can find me and us at beekeepersnaturals.com. Our Instagram is beekeepers underscore naturals. And we're available everywhere at Whole Foods. And you can also now find us at Target. Amazing. Rad. everywhere at Whole Foods. And you can also now find us at Target. I want to say to the audience that I have tried the Propolis spray many, many, many times. I use

it all the time. So that's the one that I'm going to recommend since I've tried it so much. It's amazing. It's the most amazing throat spray, especially if your throat hurts. I find it very calming and I love it. So I'm going to recommend that one. And if you want, I'd love to do a giveaway for our audience. Definitely. Okay. So let's do like a little basket of your products. All you guys have to do is follow Carly on Instagram. Say the handle one more time. Beekeepers underscore naturals. Love it. And tell us your favorite part of this episode on my latest Instagram at Lauren Bostick. Thank you for coming on.

I am jazzed the fuck up off of my be smart. I feel like it is be Adderall. I'm clear headed. I'm ready to work. Come back anytime. And we'll connect offline about where I could get a good bee vendor. Just in case I need to get a couple of queen bees to start the hive. Thank you guys so much for having me thanks for coming on do you want to win some beekeepers naturals goodies I will definitely include the blxr brain fuel shots

for you all you have to do is follow at beekeepers underscore naturals on instagram and tag a friend on my latest post at Lauren Bostic and tell them to listen to the Skinny Confidential. We always want to grow the community, so make sure you're rating and reviewing the podcast and we will see you on Thursday. P.S. You can also use code skinny at checkout to get 20% off all products.