The Skinny Confidential Him & Her Podcast - Work Life Balance, Hormone Regulation, Fertility, & Wellness Ft. Alex Taylor, Co-CEO Of Perelel Health

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

#737: Today we’re sitting down with Alex Taylor, the co-founder and co-CEO of Perelel Health, a company who created a line of vitamins with a focus on targeted nutrition for women at various hormonal life stages including fertility, prenatal, postpartum care, menstrual health, and general women's wellness. We discuss educating and supporting women's health through all stages of life, the negative effects of workaholism and social media, the physical and psychological changes motherhood brings, and Perelel Health’s creation of a better product using tailored nutrient dosing with an emphasis on gut health.   This episode is brough to you by Perelel Health   Visit perelelhealth.com/skinny for 20% off your order.   To connect with Perelel Health click HERE   To connect with Alex Taylor click HERE   To connect with Lauryn Bosstick click HERE To connect with Michael Bosstick click HERE Read More on The Skinny Confidential HERE To Watch the Show click HERE For Detailed Show Notes visit TSCPODCAST.COM To Call the Him & Her Hotline call: 1-833-SKINNYS (754-6697) This episode is brought to you by The Skinny Confidential Head to the HIM & HER Show ShopMy page HERE to find all of Michael and Lauryn’s favorite products mentioned on their latest episodes.   Produced by Dear Media

The following podcast is a Dear Media production. 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.

Leave your ego at the door. Because it's only when our ego enters the room, that's when things get dicey. That's when we start to girlboss. That's when we burn ourselves out. That's when we want to one-up each other. That's when the friction happens. And so when we can let go of our ego and really get to the work and all hold hands and walk through the fire together, that's the magic. Today, we are sitting down with Alex Taylor. She is the co-founder and co-CEO of

Parallel Health. So essentially, this is a company that created a line of vitamins, but they really focus on women at their various stages. So think like fertility, prenatal, postpartum care, menstrual health. They even go into like menopause and women's general wellness. I personally love this episode because Alex is so transparent about her own health journey, and she talks about her thyroid issues. I think thyroid issues need to be talked about so much more, especially when it comes to women. And she talks about her protocol on how she healed her thyroid naturally. So this involved her diet, reducing stress, meditation, all different kinds of things. She breaks it down for us. If you are unfamiliar with Parallel, let me tell you all about it. Parallel is a women's health company

defining a new era of radical body literacy. With that, let me introduce you to Alex Taylor. Welcome to the show. This is The Skinny Confidential, him and her. Let's get the foundation of your personal health journey and how you were diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. I had a career where I started out in the depths of the Vogue fashion closet, eventually dabbled in tech and was at Google and launched L'Oreal's first ever content marketing site that actually Gary Vaynerchuk, his company acquired it, which is wild. I just heard him on the show. Fabulous episode, by the way. But after that, I was girlbossing really hard. I was working really hard.

I eventually joined the company Who What Wear and ran the parent company, Click Media, for about five years as the president and chief editor in chief. It was during that time that I was very fortunate to be on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. And while I was being honored on the list, I was at an event and I broke out in shingles everywhere. I was 28 years old at the time. And my doctors were like, why does this woman have shingles? She's so young. This isn't normal. Everything else seems normal about her. And after nearly nine months and nine different doctors, I finally got a diagnosis that I had a thyroid disease. And very simplistically, my thyroid was eating itself. And here's the crazy part. I gave it to myself. It was self-induced. It could have been prevented. So essentially, I was under such extreme self-induced stress from my job because I was

just working so hard and didn't take a break. I was the girl that woke up at 5.30, soul cycle, work, work, work, back to bed, rinse and repeat every single day such that I compromised my own happiness and my health for a job. And at the end of the day, at the end of our lives, yeah, it's great to have a great career if you can, and that's fulfilling. But the end of my life, I want my family and my friends sitting around me. That's what's important, not my job. And I realized in this moment, my God, I compromised my health for my career. And so fast forward, this diagnosis had a domino effect on me. It would affect my fertility.

It increased my rate of potentially having a miscarriage by an additional 15%. So it really had major implications on my entire life. And that was a huge reality check for me. So through that journey, I woke up to the fact that, my God, my body is so wildly complex. And yet it is a body that I don't understand. It's been deeply objectified, oversimplified, and also completely ignored in medical research. Because it was around this time too that I learned that many women have a similar story to me. Many female specific conditions take six to 10 years to get a proper diagnosis. It'll make your head spin. And so I really woke up to the fact that I knew very little about my

body and how this influenced my future and my ability to build a family one day. I am curious about how you felt that working so hard that you're working yourself into the ground was even something that you needed to do. Like when you go back when you were young, is there something? Because for me, like the way I got attention, I've like looked back into my childhood was looking and being a certain way, exceptional achievement. And I've noticed that like I now sometimes into my adulthood bring that through. Why did you feel like you had to work yourself into the ground? It's such a great question. And it's because I am a recovering and was a raging perfectionist because I define my

self-worth by every box that I checked, every milestone I hit, every gold star I got. That was me. I was the personification of the millennial that wanted to get the rewards. And that was so important to me. I defined myself that way. And what was actually so beautiful about this experience of my diagnosis and the journey of motherhood and starting my own business, it led to so much introspection that I realized that I had to really face who I was, who I wasn't, and what I wanted to be and what my priorities were. And I look back on that time and I have such

empathy and love for that, really that little girl that was in there just trying to be perfect. You know, I was raised by a single mom. I grew up in an environment where there weren't a lot of other single moms. I always felt like I had to kind of overcompensate. I got straight A's. I always wanted to be the good student. And I carried that through for my life for so long. And then I realized it just wasn't worth it. And it took this health crisis and also just going through this process of realizing, wow, what was I doing that all for? Were you in a high pressure environment growing up? Meaning like, were there other people that were achieving at that level around you? No, it was really self-induced. It really was. I have a mother who is so incredibly nurturing and

passionate and kind. Although I will say she was the very first female executive at her company and she worked really hard and she bought a house on her own. Like that was a big deal. You know, you think like women didn't get like small business loans until like the, what, the nineties or eighties or something crazy. So it's, I think also I had put her on a pedestal and I wanted to make her proud probably is what it is now. I think also when I hear you talk that there is an interesting mixture that happened with what you just said with your childhood, but there was also something that happened in culture around that girl boss era where there was this this hustle

your face. I mean, I remember like I even had a sign by my door. It was like hustle. Like it was like hustle your face off and work yourself into the ground. And then like social media, there was another layer of that. Because remember when we first started out on Instagram, there was like this layer of like, how hard can you work? Which has totally changed now. So toxic. I remember around, I don't know what year this was, but we, and Sophia has been on the show. We went to,

we went to the Nasty Gal. It was Nasty Gal. Oh, amazing. Yeah. Office. And I remember seeing at the time, and listen, no shade to Sophia. Yes, none. But there was like, they had like the yoga, all this stuff. And they're like, you don't have to, basically you never have to leave the job. But like you do the yoga, you can like meditation. This is where you work. And I remember thinking of myself and I told the company here, I was like was like listen you'll never see any of this stuff like you need to leave the office at some point because we've learned for the younger people listening i think we've all learned that you can't just work work work all you have to have some kind of escape completely here's the other unique thing that you said with all this you also said that you're you're waking up doing the spin

classes and that is so hard on your cortisol. So you mix the spin with the girl boss, with the hustle, with feeling like you need to be a perfectionist. And then you said, I did it to myself. I think there was a lot of outside influence too. Oh, absolutely. I mean, I am absolutely, I take full responsibility for it, but also I am a product of my environment, 100%. Suddenly, social media pops up. We all very slowly became exhibitionists as byproduct of that, showing what we were doing. And that absolutely fueled a lot of the toxicity. And now I look back and I'm like, I don't need to show people what I'm doing. I just need to be happy and fulfilled in what is really giving me flow and making me feel whole. And also not

allowing other people to define me. I can't believe that there's this whole generation coming up right now. And so much of their feedback about who they are is defined by, you know, likes. I mean, at least we had a little clear airspace, but you see how it influenced this era because it was very much in parallel to when we were becoming who we were. You know, social media was there at the start of our careers, and it really shaped a lot of this expose of our journeys, you know? I think that we're going to realize that the most powerful thing moving forward is to be absent off social media and to be still and to be pensive and to be introspective and to be able to sit with yourself in silence sometimes and just think.

Like the concept of doing that has been so thrashed. Well, if you think about it, we're of the generation, like Lauren and I did not get, and I think we're similar age, we did not get smartphones until we graduated college. I think we were one of the first years when Facebook came out and you had to have a college email to do that. You upload the whole digital camera disaster. We're in the same era. Get off my Facebook. Don't ever look at it. But anyways, Instagram didn't come out until we got out of college. And so we had our entire youth and academic years to go through and just kind

of be without any of that. And I think with that, we're the first generation that had to learn how to stumble through it. Completely. I can't tell if our generation or the ones beneath are going to be impacted more. I don't know if it was better to grow up with it and just have it or if it was worse to not have it than have it and have to adjust to have it. Yeah. I read an interesting article, maybe it was in the Atlantic, about how the generation right below us, which is Generation Z, really were the guinea pigs.

And we tested so much, we almost overcorrected to allow them to have full free reign on these platforms. And there's now a lot of conversation, especially with the publication of Jonathan Haidt's book, about how we actually need to correct that. We need to protect our children a bit more from that exposure and limit, you know, at what age do they have access to the Internet. You know, I think I have a sister who's 10 years younger than me. The way she grew up was so different. You know, she's on YouTube every day when she was 10 years old and that was normal. And, you know, cool.

She was finding funny videos about cats but it shaped her to be very different and have a very different relationship with the internet and i think the way that we exist in the world you know i want my kids to go outside yeah that's how simple i want my kids to go outside and put their feet on the grass i want you i already told you i want me to chop wood i want to make s'mores outside i want them to light and i think that's what what has been really amazing about texas it's like getting out of i've heard that completely the next generation below gen i don't even know what you call it gen alpha gen alpha okay and the one that's a cool i want to

but anyways that some of these younger kids growing up that have seen their parents sitting and staring at these phones and have seen their friends, that they're actually having an adverse reaction where they look at the phone as something, it's not a good source or it's not something that they want to gravitate towards. It's almost like it's something that takes personal relationships away from them. And so I've heard that that generation is going to maybe push it. So it's really, we're in this big experiment where none of this has ever existed for the last, you know, this is all relatively new in the last 15, 20 years. And that's a very short period of time. If you think about it. I want to know how the shingles are related to

the thyroid and what you did to start to heal the thyroid. So essentially that was a clue to my immune system that it was extremely compromised such that my immune system reacted in that way. And so that was a big clue in the journey. I saw reproductive or I saw endocrinologists. I saw naturopathic doctors. I asked my OB. I asked so many doctors.

And finally we pieced it all together. And so they put me on a protocol and they said, I asked my OB. I asked so many doctors. And finally, we pieced it all together. And so they put me on a protocol and they said, if you really want to get back to homeostasis, this is what you need to do. And I should note, I had a bevy of additional symptoms that had popped up before I broke out in the shingles. So I had extreme fatigue. I was having a hard time waking up in the morning. I was really not motivated. I didn't feel great. My mood had changed. My hair was thinning. All these things were happening and I just kind of ignored it. I just kept on going until my body said stop. And so the protocol they told me was avoid gluten at all costs.

Being gluten-free isn't just like not eating gluten sometimes. It's fully committing because there's something in the gluten that effectively triggers something in your thyroid. And I don't know the exact science to be completely transparent, but he said, no gluten, reduce your stress. You have to change your lifestyle. And for me, that was work. And then the third thing was they put me on Synthroid. And that's a synthetic form of a thyroid hormone to help me kind of come back to homeostasis. I have been so rigid in my routine since this happened over 10 years ago that I'm actually now off of Synthroid and managing my thyroid condition completely naturally. And what are the things that you do on a day-to-day basis

when you say you're so rigid in your routine? Yeah, well, I changed my whole life. You know, I left the work environment that I was in. I decided to find peace in other places. I meditate. I was really fortunate to work with an amazing career life coach who taught me about the importance of Zen meditation.

So I meditate daily. I also have not eaten gluten since I was diagnosed. So that was a big change. What are the foods that you had to cut out that you don't look at anymore? I mean, anything containing gluten, really. But also, I'm lucky. I live in LA. There's a gluten-free option for everything. So it wasn't that hard. So, I mean, I'm not playing like a tiny violin over here, like, woe is me. But yeah, I cut out gluten entirely. I reduced my stress. I started to meditate.

I found other options for movement that weren't so high cortisol, like high impact. So I do a lot of Pilates. I do a lot of hiking. I do a lot of slow movement, which really helps me. And also having children really reset my system which was fascinating i didn't realize that what's wild is when you have children you go through that experience of pregnancy and postpartum it's actually the largest reset of your of your entire body ever so So imagine the overhaul that happens in your system when you go through

adolescence. It's the largest change typically in a human life where you're psychologically shifting, your hormones are shifting, everything resets, right? A woman actually experiences something of that magnitude, but greater as she goes through motherhood. So it's actually referred to as matrescence. It's the largest overhaul of your psychological forms. Everything overhauls your hormones and you're completely reset. So my doctors think that it's a combination of both my lifestyle shifts, as well as having children that really reset my system and allowed me to kind of start with this new baseline. It makes sense. We just had someone who came on the podcast. She's the co-founder of Branch Basics. And she was saying that people don't realize how smart your body is. Like if

you're, if you're, if you have a headache, there's a reason you have a headache. You should figure out what the reason is. If you have a toothache, there's a re like your body is telling you something. And that makes total sense about a reset when you get pregnant, when you have the baby. It seems to me like a resource. Absolutely. It totally makes sense. For people that run stressed, I think you and I are maybe more aligned. Yeah. Maybe a little hot. Lauren's a little more calm. In the early days when you were figuring this out and someone just says to you, got to get your stress under control. What do you first start doing? Because it sounds like you've done a lot of work and now you have the tools, but do you remember what it looked like in the beginning and how you even

thought about going about managing stress? I mean, first there was extreme denial. It's like, I'm not stressed. I'm fine. And you know, as you're in hives and you get stressed when someone says you're stressed because it makes you stress that you have to audit your stress. Completely. That is 110% it. I get stressed when I'm not stressed because I think there's something wrong. Leave me in nature and meditation. So go ahead.

Why do I feel good? This isn't good. But it's also. Exactly. He doesn't know what to do when he has to be quiet. He walks in. He's moving like this. He's hitting.

I'm like, get out of here. I've gotten better. But anyway, so this is about you, not about me. No, no, but I can relate. It's hard for me to sit still, which is also something else that I'm working on. Like, why can't I sit still? Why can't I just be in peace?

And that's why meditation has been such a reprieve for me. Just be. Have you ever thought, Lauren, that maybe I'm just not a peaceful person, okay? No, I think that's a narrative that you've told yourself you can't just be in the car today he's trying to talk to me i'm like i'm like we have three podcasts just just be we've gone through my childhood talking about like lake havasu in 2006 or 26 i'm like i'm going into three no but like i'm just saying like it's hard to be, go ahead. I relate to this

personality. In the early days, how did you start to go about it? Because now when I'm talking to Zen meditation, all these things, but it's been a long period of time where you've worked, like, what were the first things you started doing? The first things that I started doing were, I obviously, I went slow. I changed my diet. I started to take my new medication. I accepted that, wow, you know, I need to make some changes. And it was my new medication. I accepted that, wow, I need to make some changes. And it was during this time that I was introduced to Zen meditation and I started doing it. There's really no other option. I think for me, it was just, I needed something to do. I like to check a box. I like to accomplish something. So for me, that was very easy.

So I started to meditate daily. i started with about three minutes sometimes seven minutes now i do up to 20 minutes if i could do longer i would but i have kids and a business and the whole thing so it's zen meditation is that do they give you like what's the i know there's different forms of meditation look at you asking meditation well i need to know these things yeah wow what do you do specifically that's different in detail it's very much so now i practice vedic meditation which is a different form. It's also known as transcendental meditation. They're pretty much the same thing.

Transcendental meditation is actually trademarked. Vedic is not anyway. But essentially, they're all in the same spirit. It's allowing your body to relax, find peace, be present. It's actually not about not thinking about anything. It's about when a thought comes in to honor it, acknowledge it and let it go and just float. So I worked on that a lot. I had a lot of guidance. I actually keep working on it. I did a four-day Vedic meditation

retreat with actually a member of our parallel panel this past December, Patti Quintero, and it was incredible and it helped me kind of reset and get back in touch with how do I let go. In Vedic meditation, you actually get a mantra, not to be confused with a mantra. I remember thinking, gosh, you keep saying it wrong, and it's actually a mantra. And it is a very sacred word that is given to you, a Sanskrit word that you essentially repeat in your brain as you are meditating as a form of just keeping your your brain kind of focused but focused on nothing and the wild part is you're never allowed to know what your word means just never look it up never

find it i've never had because it's also part of the ceremony. There's this beautiful ceremony that they do to kind of give you your mantra. And it's selected specifically for you on who you are. It's a very short word. It sounds just like a nice sound that I repeat in my head. And it really helps me. I mean, some people use beads to help themselves focus and meditate, which I find really helpful. But this has also been a really great tool for me. So now I'm a fan of Vedic meditation. Maybe you need to try that. What if they give everyone the same word

and they just say, don't ever tell anyone. Oh, I totally thought about that, but they don't. You know, the career that you chose before is so gnarly. I've read a lot of books. I've read, I've read Kat Marnell's How to Murder Your Life, which is, it's not the same thing, but there's a similar energy. Yeah. I feel like it's around a lot of women. So I could imagine there is, there's competitive drama. Completely. The early bird gets the worm. I'm going to get into the office. Yeah. Now that you're off that roller coaster, what is your perspective looking back at it? How silly it all was. And also how full of, you know, everyone is. How full of shit everyone is. You know, I worked for these companies and I worked with so many people where we support women,

we're all about women, women founded, women led. And I found it just so disappointing that there were a lot of empty words. I wanted to create, even in my own business, I wanted to see, is it possible to be a founder, female founder, led business that actually walks the walk and talks the talk? And it's a challenge, but it feels really good. And I look back and like, why, why did we do that? But I do have the sense that so many women have kind of woken up to the fact. I think that our society has been shaped by a lot of men and supports a lot of men to, to succeed, which is great. You know, it was, it was a system that was made by men for men. Women entered the workforce later. It's just, that's what it is. It's not shame on men for doing that. We enter and we're

trying to behave in the way that men do in a workplace, but that's at odds with who we are as women. We have different superpowers. We are highly emotionally intelligent. We have other strengths. And I think a lot of women were trying to fit into this male mold of what leadership looks like. And that's actually not maybe what's best for us. And so what's been interesting for me is that I've really leaned into, I'm not woo-woo, but maybe I am like my feminine mystique. Like what is it about me and being a woman and occupying my whole self and showing up as my whole self that can allow me to be a better leader and be more authentic. So that's been actually like, honestly,

just hugely refreshing and such a huge relief for me. Yeah. I think I had a similar thing where when I first started, it was like, yes, foot on the gas. Like, yes, stay up like till one in the morning blogging, like what, like whatever I have to do. And then you do, you do have, I mean, you burn out, you have a transition where what I've realized is I'm not running a sprint here. I'm running a long drawn out long game marathon. And if I want to prepare for that marathon, I need to prepare accordingly every single day and think of it from a perspective of an athlete. And that means recovery time. And that means hydration. And that means getting out in nature. And that means you have to do these things around the mission or the marathon to be effective.

Well, I get nervous a bit in these conversations because I think the through line here for people that are starting in their earlier in their path is that you still have to work really, really hard and drive a ton of impact. But what a lot of us were doing was working so hard and burning ourselves out and then getting ourselves sick so that you couldn't keep working. Completely. That can't happen. You need to have the time. I think about it in terms of impact. So if somebody here at this company is just like, go, go, go, go, go, I might need to tell them, like, hey, take a break and then come back, refresh and keep going. But none of us were taking breaks. It was just, and then you'd burn out and then you'd become unproductive.

But there was a shift too, for for me and a huge breakthrough moment, which was I read Ryan Holiday's book, Ego is the Enemy. Have you read it? Yeah, we just had him. He was just here. Wow. Huge fan. So, so cool. We love Ryan. That book really changed me. I think that in addition to all of the work that I was doing in my therapy with my coach, everything, it really shifted my perspective. And I realized, actually, I'm my own worst enemy. It's my ego. My ego is forcing me or pushing me to post. My ego is pushing me to share these things. And it had nothing to do with actually the output. It was all about me. And so I have these commitments for my team in parallel. There

are literally 15 commitments that we agree in terms of how we work together as a brand and marketing team specifically. And the first one is leave your ego at the door because it's only when our ego enters the room. That's when things get dicey. That's when we start to girl boss. That's when we burn ourselves out. That's when we want to one up each other. That's when we burn ourselves out. That's when we want to one-up each other. That's when the friction happens. And so when we can let go of our ego and really get to the work and all hold hands and walk through the fire together, that's the magic. Yeah. It's funny. You asked earlier if we grew up in LA and I said San Diego. And when I first came to LA, and Lauren, Alex and I, we go back back actually we met and we had an office in the same building but um I remember being thrown off in this company when the conversation of titles came up and listen I understand the importance of titles and how they can translate to other organizations

or other jobs and why you need them and how certain conversations are you know taken more seriously with certain title I know all of it now learned all. But one thing I really had to root out of this business was the ego that surrounded which title certain people would get. And it was like, listen, if it's important for the job and it helps the company move forward, it helps us all work together, great. But if it's like you want a title just so you can wave that title around and think it does something for yourself. I think that is dicey in corporate structures. Again, understanding that it's needed in some capacities.

But I think when you play the title game, like who's got this status versus that, then it makes it more about the individual and less about what the company is trying to do cohesively. What I've realized now in recruiting and building my company is that when I'm interviewing someone, yeah, you have to check the box on all the skills. Fine. To me, that's table stakes. Great. We've got that sorted. I need to know, why are you here? Why do you care so much? If I can get that out of someone and really understand that they're connected to our mission and it's not about the job title, the job title can provide clarity on approval process and some orientation in that way. So yes, I agree titles are important, but it's about them feeling connected to the mission. And if they feel that deep connection, I know that the ego won't get in the way and it won't

be an issue with the title because that's oftentimes that's just it you know what are some red flags when you're interviewing people i always have to end up looking someone in the eye in person honestly it's so much about the energy the energy i feel that i have a very good sense about people i can usually smell a bullshitter from a mile away i like to to think. So really, it's about sitting down with someone and just getting to know them. I love to throw people off by saying, what do you like to do when you're not working? When I was interviewing for Google, I had went through seven rounds of interviews with lots of different people. And it was really intense. You're like thyroid cannot handle seven interviews. Oh, yeah. Oh, Jesus Christ. I was a young buck at the time.

Google how not to have stress. It's not seven interviews. But there were some really great takeaways through that process. And one of them they would refer to internally as the airport test. Could you spend five hours at the airport with this person you're interviewing? And I've taken that to heart. I think that when we come to work, we're not severed. We show up as our whole self. Much to our chagrin, it's like we show up and we bring everything from our life in that door, whether we like it or not. And so we have to show up as our full selves. And so through that exercise, I learned, wow, yeah, I kind of need to make sure I like spending time with the people that I'm going to spend most of my time with. So when I'm interviewing, I like to ask a little bit more about that.

My first question is, why are you interested in Parallel? Why did you want to apply here? And then the marketer in me is like, how'd you hear about the company? Because I always have to know. But they have to feel connected to the mission and they have to be a good, decent person. That's important. My favorite is when I'm interviewing someone and they say, well, what's the vacation time? Well, do we get holidays off? I'm like, if you're already coming with the scarcity mindset, my energy is like, how can you be resourceful are you solution oriented like when when you start asking about what's in it for you energy a hundred percent it's just like

why would you want to start a relationship out like that you'll get shit for that because most people are gonna be like oh easy i don't care if i get shit for that sorry no but i think the through line there is like give me shit is is what i always tell people like, and a lot of entrepreneurs don't like this. I distinguish between entrepreneurs and solopreneurs. Solopreneur is somebody you work for yourself. Let's say a lot of influencers are solopreneur, a lot of creators, a lot of, and there's nothing wrong with that. Lauren was that for a long time. Many of us have been that. An entrepreneur is somebody who builds a company. And what I think a company is, is it's a group of people that come together with a common cause to push something forward

together in a cohesive way. And with that, it's not just about the individual anymore. It's about the entire group. And so it's really important to protect that group with people that are there for the right reasons. So if you're- Absolutely. You know what I mean? So I think if somebody comes in and it's about what's my title what's my vacation what's my my my it's like this it's starting already with the energy of like it's only about you and it's you got to come in with like you got to be excited about the mission the company the people totally or else it's just not going to work i mean listen at the end of the day my company is only as good as the people that's what my company is My company is a bunch of people that care so much,

that show up every day and are really doing their best. Every company, every product out here is because a group of people have agreed to work together and create something. Like that's amazing. Like whether it's a glass straw or a bottle opener, I don't care. People have come together to create something

and you can add so much magic when there's actual passion behind what they're doing and actually genuine camaraderie between that team. I think we see that even with brands. You can tell when a brand has an unhappy team. You see it in the output. You see it in the revenue. You see it in the bottom line. So to me, the people are actually the very most important part of any company and the vetting process important. I was having to meet with at least four people. If I could do more, I would. But, you know, you need multiple perspectives too.

Yeah, well, and I think you've worked probably in organizations where that environment and that culture from the top down is not protected. And I think that's why people burn out and get stressed because you have a bad environment where people's egos are involved. And people can't thrive and they feel like, you know, they're not in a bad environment where people's egos are involved and people can't thrive and they feel like they're not in a great environment. I think if you're going to work and that's the place that you're in all the time and you feel that way, you got to kind of audit what you're doing. But it's interesting. I see so many incredible people that I've had the opportunity to work with and nine times out of 10, their glass ceiling is their own ego because they get in their own way. They get to an exceptional level of creation and impact in the organization. And then it becomes

about them, becomes about title. It becomes about more ownership. It becomes about X, Y, Z, and it becomes less about what they're doing to make an impact. And I see it with every single level, whether it be managers, directors, VPs, I've seen it, and it ends up being our own worst enemy, even leaders. And so, yeah, if there's one book, everyone should read. It's that Ryan Holiday book for sure. It is a good one. It is a good one. I want to know what it was like diving into fundraising. And I want to know the mud of it. And I want to know how you simultaneously were making sure you were managing your own health while fundraising because that can cause burnout. Yeah, I should take two steps back because I don't do this alone. I'm very fortunate to have a co-founder as well as a medical co-founder. So

my co-founder is literally the yin to my yang. And I am so lucky I found her. We were actually talking before we started recording that, you know, a co-founder in a business running a company with someone is almost as intimate as having a marriage. Yep. And that's really what she is to me. So Tori and I were connected because we were both feeling so frustrated and underserved and confused about how to support ourselves. And she is the smartest person I know. She went to Harvard Business School. She was a math major. I'm so not a math major. A math major. Yes. I know. I know. She's so smart.

So at any rate, together we came together and we had this vision for the company. And when it came to fundraising, I had experience because of my time at Click where I helped lead the fundraising activity there with the CEO. But she also had her experience and her amazing financial chops. So when it came to fundraising, we decided to launch the business in 2020. And because it was important for us to launch with all the SKUs, I don't know if I should tell the like origin story of why we have like what the business is, but we had to buy a ton of inventory

and we looked at each other and well, we got a fundraise, you know, that was kind of the normal thing to do. So it was like March 8th, 2020, we did our first investor call. We're like, yeah, I think that went well. And then two days later, the world literally ended and everyone's pocketbooks closed.

Every investor was putting money back into their sinking ships, trying to figure out what to do. There was so much apprehension to cut checks. And my co-founder and I looked at each other and we bootstrapped. And we put in our own money. I put in my life savings. My co-founder and I looked at each other and we bootstrapped and we put in our own money. I put in my life savings. My co-founder put in as much as she could. We ended up bringing in some money through friends and family. And through that first year, we still continued to try to fundraise. But a lot of the responses were women's health. Like, is that important?

I don't know. You know, pregnancy is only nine months of a woman's life. Is this really like maybe I should ask my wife? That was an often, you know, that was often a Is that important? I don't know. Pregnancy is only nine months of a woman's life. Is this really, maybe I should ask my wife. That was often a response that we got from a lot of male investors, unfortunately, because they just don't know about women's health. So it was really, really challenging. It was really challenging. In defense of some of those men, when people bring me things, I always say, should I ask my wife first? Don't tell them that because we don't like to hear it. Because to us, we're like, we're just another business. Do your market research. Sure.

But I do think that, and we've, listen, we're obviously in the same space. I think a lot of these men, I mean, some of these VCs aren't going to like to hear this. They're just, they haven't educated themselves enough on what's going in the women's commerce. Like some of them have started to. And it's a shortcoming of them because they missed a massive market completely i got girls are not gonna want to roll something on their face every day yeah there's all there's i mean you said so it's this education and that's true it's like you need something to roll on your face immediately those eye bags are puffy um i needed your roller this

morning i was literally on the plane like i wish i. No, we'll get you the mint roller. I need the mint. You need to be traveling with the mint roller. Yes, I need that one. So go ahead. So you bootstrap it. So we bootstrap the business. Then we brought in some capital through friends and family. And within our first 30 days of launching, we had shipped to all 50 states and women were into it. They love the product. They love the brand. What was the first product? So rewinding, I'll kind of give you our origin story and tell you what the brand and the product is. So my co-founder and I were both circling very similar drain. We felt that we were these

new moms. We felt completely underserved by what was on the market through my own autoimmune experience. And that later shaped my fertility and pregnancy journey. I felt completely failed by what was available. So did my co-founder. And I'll never forget, I marched into my OB's office holding a bottle of prenatals. And it was like, it was the good brand at the time. It was like, I would bring all my products to my doctors. If I go to my dermatologist, I show her what I'm using. I'm like that crazy, but I think it's good. I want their expert advice. So I walk in there and I show her the bottle and she's like, well, you're paying for really expensive pee. I was like, what? Excuse me? She's like, well, you're not really retaining any of these nutrients. And I have an OB who's very well-versed in nutrition. And that got me going. Simultaneously, my co-founder was dealing with

her own experience and she was really looking into the prenatal vitamin category. She has a daughter that was born with a non-genetic related cleft lip. And my co-founder is the picture of health. She uses clean products. She's very fortunate to eat organic, all of the above. So when she found out that this cleft was likely a result of something nutritional that she could have potentially influenced, and of course, we'll never know, that gutted her.

And so she went to great lengths to understand why, like any mother would. And it was during this time that she was just going deep, exploring, understanding what it was that could have influenced this for her daughter, knowing that she wanted to continue to build her family. And we were both connected actually by a VC who's a mutual friend because we were both chirping in his friend's ear saying, I think I want to start a company. I want to help women like me that are in the same life stage, feel so underserved. She's like, you guys just need to go on a blind date. So she set us up on a blind date. We met at Erewhon, both showed up in our yoga pants and we were both

pumping at the time. And we're like, hi, do you have 30 minutes? Like, let's chat. It was so interesting. And we just started to meet regularly and think about what could we do to support women like us? What did we need? And throughout these little meetups, my co-founder would give me updates on what she was learning about her daughter's experience, et cetera. And we finally keyed in on the fact like, wow, women's health has to be re-imagined from the ground up. Our bodies have been so oversimplified. Everything on the market is so one size fits all. And as we know, our bodies are so complicated. We run on a 28-day-ish cycle. We go through major hormonal shifts throughout our life. Pregnancy in and of itself is a wild

moment in time for us. So we realized, why is everything really treating this life stage and just our general reproductive health as either pregnant or not pregnant? So we thought, is there a way to also create a product that changes with us? And we were really focused initially on the prenatal vitamin stage, because when you think about when you're trying to get pregnant and each trimester of pregnancy, you know, what you need to do to optimize your odds for fertility is really different than what you need when you're in your third trimester and you're building baby's bones and preparing your vaginal flora for delivery. It's just different. And so we thought,

is there a product that can actually change and shift with you throughout each stage that changes to support not only baby's nutritional needs, but mom's needs too? There was nothing out there that was thinking about mom. And that was the whole thing for us. We're like, can we create this brand that is wholly woman-centric, that solves to be dynamic with her throughout each phase of her life? And so we had this idea to do targeted vitamin routines for each stage. And we wanted a product that also was really holistic. So like many women, I have an OBGYN,

but I'm very fortunate to also have an acupuncturist. And I have a friend who's a nutritionist who gives me a lot of recommendations. And so, I guess this looks good and I'll take that and maybe I need more vitamin D. And I'd walk out with this bag full of random vitamins that I thought I needed. And I remember thinking to myself, like, God, wouldn't it be cool if all my doctors could get on a Zoom and agree on what I'm taking? Like, make sure I'm not taking too much vitamin A and giving myself liver toxicity. Like, I don't know. I'm not a doctor. And so we thought, wow, is there a product that can not only be targeted to our hormonal life stages and what we need, but also a product that is truly comprehensive, that all these different practitioners can come in and agree on and is made by the experts who know best. And so we had this idea and then we looked at each other and we're like, ha ha ha, this is so funny.

Like, what do we know? Like we're business people, we're marketing people. Like we have no business starting a vitamin company. And my co-founder has a family friend who's actually the chief of OBGYN out of the top medical school in the United States. And we did a Zoom call with her and we pitched this idea. And she goes, you need to start this. And it was the scariest moment of my life because A, I had major imposter syndrome. I was like, who am I to start a company? And B, what a tremendous responsibility. This product has to be the most trustworthy product because this is the most important time in many people's lives. It creates life. The stakes are very high. She offered to help us build our medical panel. So my co-founder, we don't formulate. We run the

business. We make sure everyone has a great experience. But this doctor came on as an advisor and helped us build our entire panel of doctors. We brought on a medical co-founder, Dr. Bayati. She's a holistic OB-GYN in Santa Monica. She's also my co-founder's OB. So she's really intimate with the whole experience of my co-founder. And we brought on this team of gnarly doctors,

not just random people we found on LinkedIn with like an MD. We have two of the nation's top reproductive endocrinologists. We have one of the top naturopaths. We have multiple doulas as well on our panel. We have a reproductive psychiatrist, maternal fetal medicine doctor who is widely published. We have a team of some of the most incredible doctors and practitioners coming together. And they were just like, yes, we want to do this. We want to create a better product. And also it's nice because the product kind of educates our patients on what they need. We have such limited time with everyone. So they all agreed to join us. And then we looked at each

other, okay, we're starting a business. So we decided to call it Parallel because we want to stay parallel to wherever our woman is in her hormonal journey. And we started the prenatal vitamin category because it was just the most ripe for reinvention. And the doctors, our dream came true. They got on the Zoom. They argued. They formulated. We also added so many layers to the process to ensure it was extremely rigorous for every single ingredient that goes in. It is backed by clinical studies, a whole ton of research so that every single ingredient is extremely thoughtful and targeted to that stage. It's been amazing what we've been able to create. And it blows my mind that that one blind date blind date if you will at Erewhon turned into

this and I still like pinch me I can't believe it's even real to be honest did through this did you find out what the deficiency was and the reason that your co-founder had a baby with a cleft lip did you guys find out what the nutrient was that was missing? Great question. So again, while there's no explicit way to ever point A to B, what she has learned and what she believes is the reason is that the prenatal vitamin that she was taking used folic acid. Folic acid is a synthetic form of folate. Folate is a naturally produced nutrient that you need. It supports neural tube development. It's related to clefts, et cetera. It's a really important nutrient when you're trying to get pregnant. And in the early days of pregnancy, you need less later on in your pregnancy.

But what she learned is that she was taking folic acid. The issue with folic acid is 60% of women have a genetic variant called the MTHFR gene and she had it. And that means that you can't methylate the folic acid and transform it into folate, which is the more bioavailable form that we can put to use in our body. I think that's a super important topic for people because I asked Lauren, you know, Gary Brekka, have you heard of him? Okay. So he talks about this and I want to get him on the show. But a lot of women are prescribed folic acid or do you have that gene you may not want? Is that correct?

If you have that gene, your body likely cannot methylate it and turn it into the bioavailable usable format. And so because of that, and by the way, a lot of brands use it because it's cheaper. It's synthetic. His perspective from what I've heard him say is, if you have that gene and you take it, that that is actually what leads to a lot of postpartum depression. And that's the other thing. We don't know.

I'm not sure on that. No, but you're right. We don't know. And there is a lot of theory and a lot of research, and very well, that could be the case. and this is a huge reason also why we exist is that there's so much we don't know about our own bodies so let me ask you this say someone's getting pregnant do they need to be tested to see if they don't absorb folic acid just take a methylated folate instead it's that simple okay that's that simple so so should everybody be taking a methylated folate instead. It's that simple. Okay, so that's that simple. So should everybody

be taking a methylated folate? I would recommend yes, also because it's a more natural format that's closer to the natural version. It's like, why would you create the body burden of processing the folic acid to turn it into folate? So it's like, you might as well. Why doesn't every brand do that? Because it's cheaper? Because it's cheaper. It's easier. So when you're, say someone's pregnant and they're listening or they want to get pregnant, they need to find a prenatal that has, you say it because... Methylated folate. Methylated folate.

That's very important. Very important. When you're building a baby. Yes. Especially during the first stretch. So typically you want to be taking that while if you're actively trying to conceive and you'll really need more of that during those first up to nine, 12 weeks of pregnancy. After that, you can actually reduce the dose, which is what our packs naturally do for you. We adjust the

dosing based on where you are in your journey. So for example, in our second trimester pack, we reduced the amount of folate, but we increased the amount of magnesium and introduce calcium. That's so cool. Yeah, it's crazy. You like go on the journey of the mother. Exactly, the mother and the baby. So as the baby is building more bones and cartilage, we introduce even more magnesium to support mom's cramps and maybe she's a little constipated, but we also have more calcium for all that bone building activity we introduce a probiotic in our third trimester because during the third trimester you need to really build up your gut flora because your child inherits your gut health right and you know that i did delayed bathing yeah i kept all that flora on my kid wait so you did a home birth i did not do a home okay

i didn't bathe my kids. Oh, got it. You delayed the birth. She's four. I still haven't bathed her. I kept my flora on her. Oh my God, I love it. I love it.

Can you imagine? Michael was like, Lauren, it's two weeks later. You got a baby. I was joking. It's so important though. We were talking to another couple. And it went nuts. The internet went crazy. And we were saying and it went by like went

nuts the internet was crazy and we're saying like after the birth you can delay giving a kid a bath for a little while and let them like sit on that floor and people were like oh child abuse you don't bathe your kids oh wow yeah they took it out of context they'll probably take this out of context so after the mother has the baby do you have something that supports the after? We do. We do, which is often a very forgotten fourth trimester. I mean, it's like, how's the baby? Yeah, exactly. The mom's chopped liver.

Exactly. And that was a big thing for us. We also need to solve for mom and what she needs. Because also, this is actually the time that she needs the most support. I don't think I was taking after Zaza right away. I think I was so in a fog that I wasn't taking anything to support me. Wow. Go ahead. I mean, that is a very common story. I think a lot of women don't realize or not even, most of us don't know that we're supposed to

continue taking a prenatal postpartum. Were you taking folic acid during that one? I'm going to ask you about things off air. Yeah. You can ask them on it. She got gnarly postpartum depression the first time around. I think the second time around she knew and she had some tools to work with her. I did too though. We were both confused. I actually had postpartum anxiety, which I didn't even know was a thing. Did you have intrusive thoughts?

Unbelievably. Yeah. Unbelievably so. No one wants to talk about that because it's uncomfortable. They last a long time. Oh yeah. Like thoughts that you're like, why am i thinking this or just like crazy things like the knives are gonna jump off the deck and fall on the baby like the baby or my child's gonna trip down two stairs and die

like crazy things you're holding the baby like i remember even holding the baby and being like i can't stand up and hold the baby like i'm not not, I'm going to drop the baby. Like just like weird things. And it's very real. And over 80% of women experience this. And we just never have had the space to have these conversations. I mean, that is, you know, we like totally shit on the internet at the top of this conversation, but also like the internet's been great because it allows us to share these things and feel a little less alone and realize, oh, wow, that is so normal. It's part of the experience. But what we did with our mom multi pack is essentially created a product that can support you postpartum and through the early years of motherhood. So it has, you know, your general postnatal multivitamin. It has an omega with DHA and EPA, which is actually really important for

postpartum depression. Yeah. PPD, as we call it. Super, super important for your cognitive health, as well as a beauty blend support. So it has a biotin and collagen blend to help rebuild your hair, skin, and nail health postpartum. Oftentimes we forget about that. And then we're like three months down the line, like, why am I losing handfuls of hair? So you can start that protocol really early, immediately after birth. And then it also has a stress support blend with ashwagandha and L-theanine to help the emotional balance that's kind of happening in real time, right? We're completely recalibrating all of our hormones going through matrescence. Meanwhile, they just sit there and do nothing. Like I've never, it's the gnarliest thing.

It's almost like a twilight zone. I'm like, it is. She gets mad at me about it. I just find it actually offensive. I think it's the gnarliest thing it's almost like a twilight zone i'm like it is she gets mad she like gets mad at me about it i just find it i find it like actually offensive i think it's so offensive i mean like it's almost like and then like you ask them to like go downstairs and get you like a cup of ice water with a lemon and some mint and they look at you like like you ask them i think you're just in a postpartum haze i did a lot of that i did a lot of that lauren you sound like a crazy woman i love it i get it out of all your products i am obsessed with what i'm drinking it's the cellular hydration powder you said it has hyaluronic acid and collagen and

electrolytes those are hitting all my boxes the reason that i like this though is because of what you said off air it's not like offensive I feel like sometimes when I drink electrolytes, it's like Gatorade. And I'm like, I can't, it needs to be like an aperitif. Totally. I don't need this like entree for my electrolytes. And I think that what you said,

you said it's chill and it is chill. It's really good. I would recommend this to everybody. I think this would be so good over ice, even with some tequila, if you want to. It's really excited about it. It's a really awesome product. And I've been really into ingestible hyaluronic acid. It makes such a difference for me.

And so this product is such a game changer. What does ingestible hyaluronic acid do? I've actually known a thing we've ever talked about. It's great for your skin. It's great for your skin. It helpsump reduce fine lines hydrate inside you exactly hyaluronic on your face the skin pseudocles the clear one is your hyaluronic so you should be drinking it too okay and hyaluronic acid actually only really works if there's water in the environment and whether it be humidity or within your body. So actually

ingestible format is amazing. It works really well. This is like delicious. It works really good. Lauren was giving me a compliment earlier today, which was nice. I was? I write them down when I get them. I keep a drill. I have ticks on a wall at home. There's like four ticks now. I'm just kidding. But she was saying that i'm more open to in this case it was like household cleaning supplies but i always tell the audience like we learn on this show at the exact same time that we record a little earlier but like i love doing this because i would have never even just the things we're talking about right now as a man like you just don't think about these are these are not conversations that are going to be on my

ass if i ever get pregnant again about this full like ass thing. I love it. I love it. I think like it's important because we, I think, have gotten better over the years, just individually, from a lot of perspectives, because we get to talk to people like yourself and learn about these things. Yeah, completely. And like I would have never, I know about hyaluronic acid, but I never even thought

about it. Totally. Well, I think that was what was so important for us. Our mission was to set out and create a business that educates women on how their bodies work and also how to support them in a simple way. Our bodies are really complex. It's a very complex solution. Some of our products are five vitamins a day that you have to take, but we make it really

simple. And we really want to educate women on there's ways to really target and support whatever your health or fertility goals are at that time to just give you better outcomes and make it easy though, at the same time. Isn't it interesting that you probably, I mean, I'm just going to say this, you are more fulfilled with what you're doing now than hustling your face off for someone else, waking up? I mean, interesting is maybe not the right word, but it must be so much more fulfilling for you to do this than what you were doing. I feel like I haven't worked a day in my

life. I candidly feel that I have true flow in my life. I love what I do. I really believe in what we're doing and the impact we're making. I mean, we see it every day. You know, we hear from women. A woman emailed us at 3 a.m. last week to tell us she was pregnant before anyone else. She said, I feel compelled to tell you this.

And it's so incredible. We just also sponsored someone's first round of IVF. She's never been able to afford it. And there is something so incredible about making an impact in people's lives and also giving them peace of mind. There was one goal too, you know, when we were starting out, like if we can just give women everywhere the peace of mind that they have checked the box and everything they need to do to just at least optimize their best outcomes, whether it be for fertility, the products for PCOS, for PMS, PMDD. If she can at least check the box that she's done what she can from a nutritional perspective through supplementation, then great, we've done her job. And it's wild. We just see it

in the feedback we get all the time. I love hearing stories like this when something really challenging happens and something comes out the other side. You wouldn't have probably had this if you didn't have the challenge that you had. Absolutely. Do we have a code for our audience? Can we do a giveaway? Especially with the cellular hydration powder, they need this. Can we do like a giveaway? Oh my God, let's do it. That would be amazing. Can we give away like both me and Alex's favorites? Yes, let's do our favorites. Okay, we'll do a basket of our favorites. All you have to do is tell us your favorite takeaway from this episode on my latest

post at Lauren Bostic and follow Parallel Health or you can find us at P-E-R-E-L-E-L health.com. Do we have a code? Yes, you have a code. It's skinny for 20% off. Code skinny for 20% off. We'll link it up. We will link it up. Definitely go get that hydration powder. And if you're looking to get pregnant or you're pregnant or even after pregnancy to be supported, you guys have all different kinds of things on the site. Yeah. So we actually, we're not just a prenatal vitamin company. We have products for other life stages. So we have a hormonal balance product that's for a men's product. So if you have PCOS or abnormal periods, we have a great product for you. We have a cycle support product. They're actually vitamins that

sync with your cycle. So as you move through your 28 day cycle, it updates and adjusts the nutrients that you're getting through each stage. So again, that targeted nutrition, we have products for trying to conceive. We have postpartum products. And then, of course, we created a men's product really in service of her. I like the CoQ10. Yes. So it's a great product for anyone that's trying to optimize their fertility

or just support their general health and wellness. CoQ10 is great for fertility. But if I take this, we might have another baby. Maybe, but it's also really just great for your general health. You do not need any more testosterone. Let's see what happens. Where can everyone find you if they want to say hi? Oh, thanks.

You can find me at itsalextaylor on Instagram. Alex, thank you for coming on the show. I love this episode and I'm excited to see what you do. Thank you, Alex. Thank you so much. Thank you. Go shop parallelhealth.com slash skinny. I would recommend, like personally because I've tried it, Thank you so much. Thank you. Go shop parallelhealth.com slash skinny.

I would recommend, like personally, because I've tried it, their powdered magnesium. It is so good to wind down to. It's like kind of like a mocktail and it just gives you like a nightcap at the end of the night. I've been drinking it before I go to bed. I've been in Nantucket enjoying it every single night. I think you guys will love it. On that note, go to parallelhealth.com slash skinny. That's P-E-R-E-L-E-L health.com slash skinny. Parallelhealth.com slash skinny.