EP #157: How Gut Health is the Gateway to Joy with Elan Halpern and Kiki Couchman, Co-Founders of Sourmilk

Welcome back to another episode of Everyday Endorphins, a mental health podcast focused on the importance of finding joy and happiness in daily living. I'm your host Stella Steffanopolis, and this week I had such a fun conversation with two very entrepreneurial driven successful and ambitious young women, Alon Halperin and Kiki Kouchman, who are the co-founders of Sour Milk, which is a probiotic yogurt brand. At the time that we recorded this episode, sour milk was actually called "e-benny", so the name of the brand was actually completely different when we recorded. They went through a whole rebrand and changed the name to sour milk, so you'll notice that we refer to the yogurt company as "benny", but please note that sour milk is actually the name of the brand now, which I personally prefer, I think it's hilarious, but regardless from my own personal preferences, we had such a candid conversation truly about the founding story of their company, what it's like to take a risk in life, leaving a very cushy job in finance and in the tech world, and diving had first into building a brand and into building a yogurt company. We talk about how the two of them met at Stanford, how they decided that they wanted to start a yogurt company, and why gut health is so important when we think about our health and wellbeing holistically. Food is so integral to feeling good in ourselves and feeling connected to others, sharing the experience of dining and whatnot, and I personally got to learn a lot about the yogurt industry, and why it's so important to nourish our gut properly. So it was an absolute pleasure having Kiki and Alon on the show before we dive into this podcast, reminder to like, rate, and review everyday endorphins on whichever listening platform you prefer. Hi, Alon, hey Kiki, thank you so much for coming on to Everyday Endorphins, it's so great to have you here. Thanks for having us, Stella. Thanks for having us. So it's really funny, and I probably told you this when I met you both about a month or two ago, but I saw your videos Kiki on my TikTok, and everything kept popping up. Like all that it was every day, I'd get a video about how I quit my job in private equity to start a yogurt company, which is a great hook by the way, which I'm sure you know. I was like, oh, this is interesting. So I kind of started to follow along and it was so wonderful to get to meet the both of you during one of my friends community walks, is he has this like amazing community where she hosts this wellness entrepreneurial walks with people in the wellness entrepreneurial community. And I saw she was doing a collab with your yogurt brand, and I was like, I have to go to this. So setting the stage for my listeners, that's how we met how I came into your orbit, which I'm so happy to have crossed paths with the both of you, but how did that walk even come to be, because I don't even know if we got to talk about how that collab came to life. First of all, thank you Stella. I really appreciate it. I think it's a can often feel like when you're making social content, it's just going into the void, and you don't actually know that anyone seeing it or that. You know, there's people actually rooting for you on the other side. So I really appreciate that. And then actually that's how it came to be is easy reached out because she had seen my videos on social media. And so she had just called DMed me and proposed let's do a walking club together. And then I tried to get more a bit of a broader audience and incorporate more brands and conversation around food and what that means and not just sort of the walking wellness meditation. And they naturally pair very well together, given we are sort of a gut healthy yogurt. I think there is often an association with sort of a deeper awareness and a mindfulness as you're eating. And so it felt really natural. And then we just helped on a call and we started the actual process of, you know, what can we do to create a real life thing, real life community event. And it felt very natural to just plug into her existing walking club. That's also such like a beautiful thing about New York as well. There's so many creatives. There's so many opportunities to partner with different brands, do different popups. And it looks like from what I've seen on social media, you've been doing more of that, which we'll get into, but I want to backtrack a little bit and just start at the founding story of Benny. So I got to hear a little bit of the gist of this story during the walking club. But I would love to hear from the two of you how this concept came to life and how the two of you met and decided like I'm going to build this brand. It's a good question. So a couple of years ago, I was facing a whole host of gut health issues as most people do, especially around our age. And this manifested for me like kind of predictable ways like feeling gloated, had brain fog, you know, digestion issues, all the above. But what really kind of got my attention was when I got a hormone panel done and saw that all my hormones are really low. And that was pretty concerning considering early 20s, like hormones should not be low. So when I started to uncover like how do you actually hear hormones. I learned that a ton of the roads led to the microbiome and it turns out a lot of your home on production stems from the microbiome. There's this whole connection between about in the brain. And so that sprung me down this rabbit hole of learning about the microbiome and gut health and just how pivotal of a role these like trillions and trillions of tiny bacteria play in our overall health and well-being. And so what I did was tried to figure out how can you actually heal your gut, especially in America where our diet and lifestyles aren't really conducive to having healthy guts. And one of the things I learned was the best way to do so is by taking probiotics. And ideally you get probiotics from foods that you eat as opposed to a supplement or a pill or a powerful. And in my head I was like great, like I eat yogurt every single bit like I should be in the clear yogurt to prevent the food. But when I dug into the signs of conventional yogurt quickly learned that most yogurt on the shelf isn't actually probiotic. So instead of buying yogurt from the grocery store started making my own and I started taking specific probiotics that were designed to be really healthy for your gut and fermenting them in a yogurt. And I started getting this saying that was incredibly good for my gut health just by eating the foods that I love to eat every single day. And that's really the goal and premise of Benny is how do we get got healthy foods and really overall healthy foods from the things that we love to eat. And actually because there's tons of foods out there that are extremely good for us but they just like they taste bad and they aren't a part of our regular dietary experience. So we really want it to be accessible and easy for you to get really got healthy things. Yeah. And when you told me that most yogurt actually doesn't have as many probiotics is like maybe we need or that could be really good for our gut. I was shocked really because we think that yogurt has the adequate amount of probiotics for our health and our well being. And also in Greek like I love a good Greek yogurt moment so it's like okay like I'm going to have my Greek yogurt granted like Chobani or Faye in the United States it's nothing compared to I think like the quality of the yogurt in Europe or in Greece in particular, which maybe as a whole other tangent but I was like oh you know I eat yogurt I'm getting my probiotics but it's very shocking to hear that it doesn't actually have as many probiotics as you would think. It was very clever that you concocted your own little mixture of different probiotics to create your own yogurt and that was kind of I guess what the first iteration of some sort of product for you. It's a classic a lawn move as someone who's watched her watch her it's like she's patient zero she's test number zero on everything she dies. You know if there's a new way to better enhance your performance in this way or to increase your longevity in this way like she's going to run tests on herself and try to control the very levels as much as possible to see that it actually works and so when she started making this yogurt in some seem tremendous benefits. But I knew that there was something there because she read all the textbooks she done all the research and made sure that she was isolating like what is actually the right thing that's going to make me feel better. And I think that's also just like the story of the most successful entrepreneurs is identifying the problem that they've experienced themselves and trying to find a solution that caters to them and seeing like how can I scale this how can I make this widely accessible to more people. So you would have the gut health issues a lot but then Kiki where do you come into this story do you also have you experience gut health issues was this kind of like you're also from your own lived experience or did you just hear the idea and you were like yeah sign me up. lived experience in the sense that we lived together so yes. He was subject to all my experiments like day one. There we go for this is the missing piece so you were living together while this was all happening. So we met at Stanford and undergrad and we really bonded over human nutrition class that we were in it was a food systems class and we became really good friends and actually that's when I really learned about a lot of like crazy testing on her own body. She was really into bulletproof coffee and she would iterate on it every single morning and she would have me try different recipes that she was taking and she would take note of how she was feeling and ultimately she didn't end up sticking with that because it didn't make her feel good and that's a huge part of this. I have a quick question before you continue so it sounds like a lot like in college you were the very health conscious person like you were like trying the different iterations of bull proof coffee trying to like mash up all these probiotics all the things do feel like Kiki living with someone who really cared about their health and their well being from like a food and nutrition perspective. So I've been influenced you into like adopting healthier practices because I college is like it's very hard to be healthy it's very hard to be disciplined and to like have your routine and all the things. So I'm just curious to hear, like, as roommates, how Alon's health practices influenced the way that you engaged with your health and wellbeing at that time. I would say we are very different approaches to health. In the way of I actually would put myself in a very healthy category. I cook almost every meal. I am very conscious of what I put in my body. You had barely drink like all these sorts of things. I would say Alon is like, how do I hack my health to the next level? And so I don't really take supplements. She takes 30 supplements a day. I don't know, maybe that's an exaggeration, but she takes a ton, right? And so there is a different approach that we have. And yes, she still eats healthy and all those sorts of things. But I would say I fall into like the balanced category of generally, I'm in tune with my body. I'm not taking all the tests and seeing that like on a blood panel, I'm in the top 1% range of my health and longevity. But I think that's why yogurt speaks to me so much is it something that's I already eat every single day. I can get good protein, low carbs, all these good vitamins that come from this organic milk. And also the probiotic supplements that I would need to take a pill or a powder for. I actually could just eat. And so for me, it's a really seamless integration into the way that I define healthy for my own lifestyle. Anyway, we met at Stanford. All of us just say we met at Stanford. I'm in and we ended up living together in San Francisco. We graduated during COVID and so we moved to SF. We lived together there and obviously those were very different days for many of us. And so we became attached to the hip in almost like domestic partners as we always joke. Like a marriage at that point. Exactly. Exactly. And never really thought much of the yogurt that Alon was making. I mean, we all ate it, but it wasn't anything that we actually had a vision for scaling. And over the past two years, we both ended up moving to New York, just a sort of broad vision in our own horizons and grow in different ways. And when we were thinking about what was next for us, just in our careers, it became clear to both of us that this was an experience that we wanted to have. Like starting this type of company and bringing this level of impact to so many people was something that we felt so strongly about. And so it spoke to me in that way, per my own version of healthy, what that looks like, for actually what I want to learn and what I want to be spending my days doing. This felt like a very natural fit for what it should be. In addition to my dad grew up on a dairy farm, I grew up in Sonoma, which is very agriculture. I studied human biology with sort of a specific focus in food system. So this felt like almost a homecoming in terms of how I would focus my energy. Yeah. I mean, that's also really important context too, because clearly there is some sort of passion pre-testing of this, you know, homemade yogurt, right? Like, it's still very much a part of you. I mean, your passions and your interests and the way that you were raised. So I like that, like this idea of it being a homecoming kind of like full circle. But to move to New York, which is an incredibly expensive city, I mean, I guess San Francisco is also pretty expensive too, but like coming to New York, starting this new chapter of your life and then deciding to quit your job to take a big risk is difficult. It's really hard to do. What I do love about New York, it's a very creative space and there's a huge entrepreneurial community. So there are a lot of people, I'm sure that you can like lean on for support and like find solace and a lot of other people also pursuing similar paths. But regardless of that environment, like it is really difficult to take that risk psychologically, at least for me, it would be to take the risk of leaving my full time job to quote unquote pursue my passion or to want to start my own company and kind of go full speed ahead. So what was that decision making process like for you? How did you come to the conclusion that you both were ready to pivot in life and to try this out? Did that come with doubts? Did that come with? I'm sure it came with anxiety and stress and all the things, but I'd love to hear a little bit more about what that initial thought process was like and the transition for the two of you. Yeah, it's definitely a challenging and very long and reflective process to do something like that. So I think as you know, as Keke has a background in private equity and work private equity company for four and a half years, I studied computer science at Stanford and so ended up as a product manager at a tech company over the same duration. And so we were very much in the conventional jobs, so to speak for college graduated students. And this was a drastically a huge change. So there's sort of three components to it. One is deeply understanding and digging into what excites you and what drives you every day. And so that's kind of like a product in the space that you're working in. Two is like transparently like finances. Like when you put your job, especially for the type of business that Keke and I are starting where it's not venture back, venture scale, we're not going to like, you know, raise a bunch of money and use that to feel it. Like we're very much of a typical standard business, making a product and then trying to sell it for more than we make it. We had to kind of go into this knowing that we weren't going to make money for the next couple of years. And do we have the sort of like savings enough savings to actually fund our lives for those that period where we don't anticipate making money. And then the third is like the product itself. And like do we actually think this product has legs and there's a potential market for it, right? Because you could be so excited about working on something and like wake up every day, fire it up about your art piece. But like if no one buys it, then it's not really a sustainable business. So it has to be something that you're excited about, you're in a financial place that makes you able to do it. And then like the product has enough legs, we think there's actually a market for it. And so like those were the three areas that we really had to focus on and deeply understand before we able to go full time. And the way we did that was like quite frankly, like a lot of reflections and dot falsities around that leaning on each other to dig into like the trade-offs and risks and deeply understanding what's going to make us like happy. Not only what can be a successful business, but like what we really see ourselves doing. It's really next like five, 10 years. And we're doing that nights and weekends while we're still full time at our other companies until we decided that it was enough conviction to go full time on Benny. I love that. There's like a question that I want to ask based off of something that you said, but as you were sharing your decision to quit your job and to pursue this, I started to think about, because you were even talking about how it's like a very self reflective process to think about what type of work excites you, where you energize. And when you start to kind of identify those things, you can start to think about your values and like your areas of strength and all of that. And so I was thinking about this concept of like what makes work meaningful. And yesterday I actually went to a conference at NYU. Their business school, it was with the initiative of purpose and flourishing. My brain is still coming down from every, all the knowledge I was soaking up because it was truly so good. But there was this one researcher and professor who gave a spark note, like keynote talk about why some jobs are better than others or like why we think certain jobs are better than others. And he asked this very philosophical rhetorical question on like what makes work meaningful. Is it meaningful because it is loved or is it loved because it's meaningful? And I want to pause there because I feel like it's a very deep question and I couldn't even answer it. Like how do we define meaningful work? Is it because we were raised in this environment, we went to prestigious universities, we're in cities where it's very competitive and everyone's in IB or private equity or this or that consulting and we're praised because we're in these industries or is it possible to find meaning out of the love of what you're doing? And so when you pause and just think about that question, how does that resonate or land with you when you think about your background in the corporate space and what you both have done and how you're now approaching entrepreneurship? I guess it's similar to you, I don't have a straight answer on what it is, but I will say that it took a lot, at least I can speak for myself, a lot to really separate myself from deriving value from all these institutions and actually think about what's the experience that's going to provide meaning and joy for me every single day and learning, honestly, that's a huge part of this too. And that altogether, I think will create a very meaningful career for myself. And I think that's something that we had to sit with is we don't know what the other side is going to look like. We don't know that this is going to be successful. Are we going to have the outcome that Poppy had? Like who knows? And if we don't, will this still have been a valuable and meaningful worth of our time? Two years, three years, five years, ten years, who knows what it will be. And I think given it's a literal physical product that we can put into people's hands, we can see the satisfaction, we can see how it's changed people if they eat it day after day. We get to work together as best friends and bring something to life that wasn't in existence three months ago. And we get to accomplish things that we didn't actually think we could ever do together and celebrate each other as we do that. To me, there's a ton of meaning in that that I wouldn't be able to derive from my previous corporate job. So I don't quite know what my answer is, but I know that that's how I'm thinking about the meaning in that situation. I love that. And like, I wanted to ask the question because I didn't expect either of you to actually have a fully baked answer. I don't. This is something I've really struggled with and I'm trying to figure out as well. It's like, where do you derive meaning in different parts of your career and different things that you do and different experiences that you have? How do you value that? Right? I mean, these are very hard questions. questions to answer, but I was curious to just hear your initial thinking around it, because of course that can change over time. As you continue to build and grow, meaning might look different, right? Like as this continues to progress. I also feel like in the context of meaningful and things that have meaning to you, it's super subjective, like as insubjective to what you find meaningful, right? So like part of the motivation and why I felt so excited and key, felt so excited about working on Benny is because it sat at the intersection of the two things that I was spending the most time on and loved the most, which is health and food. As you can probably tell, like I was spending a ton of time in health and like doing these experiments and researching health, but then also like you can add big foodies, like I worked in restaurants, kiki cooks all the time. We throw like big dinner parties like we love food in the way that food brings people together and is social. And Benny sat at the intersection of those two things, which is why it felt so perfect as a product. And someone who's like not a foodie and he like doesn't give a shit about health would probably look at our product and be like, this is meaningless. Like this is just like, it's not important to me at all. So it's an interesting kind of paradigm to think about like meaningfulness. Not to continue down this engagement, but I like there is also a level of what are you doing in that space, not just what space do you sit in, but what's your actual job and what are the things that you're doing. And I think people discount back a ton. I could go work for Pepsi's R&D branch and it would be drastically less meaningful than working on Benny with a lawn. And I'm still in the same space of how do I think about prebiotic sodas or how do I think about like health and food and make it fun and creative and all these sorts of things. But the end of the day, so much of this meaning is also bringing in that one dollar in our bank account from something we created. And I think there's something there too that is discounted in the broader conversation. And I think that is like entrepreneurial. It's building. It's having a thought in your head become crystallized as a thing, right? That other people can experience. And you had said something, Kiki, like the meaning is like building this with a lawn. And we still haven't talked about how you guys are best friends. You met in college and you decided to become business partners. So what has been the most rewarding part of that experience? And on the flip side, where do the challenges arise when you're living and breathing the same mission and passion and goals with someone that you're super close to? Where's there the excitement and where is there the difficulty with that? I'll just start with the difficulty one that actually just came up with my boyfriend last night, which is I've become a bad conversationalist since starting Benny. A lot and I've talked about this a little bit, but I've really noticed it. I'm obsessed with something and I live in the world of yogurt with a lawn. Does anyone else give a shit about yogurt this much? In some ways, yes, because they think the project is super cool and they think what we're building is really interesting and why we've decided to do this. But beyond that, no. And I think it's really easy to stay in our heads and stay in our relationship between me and Alon and fire off all of these interesting things and create this universe of interesting yogurt world. And that's all I can think about and all I can talk about. And really very few other people care so deeply, which is why we're so well suited to do this. But also a huge challenge is to maintain grounding and context to the outside world. And that makes it sound so dramatic. But if I were to choose one thing that I'm thinking about right now, I think being in it with a friend almost heightens that. I think that one of the superpowers that we get from being best friend co-founders and for what it's worth, I think most people would advise against doing what we're doing. They would say, it's not part, just starting the company with your best friend, your relationship can blow up. And it's effectively the second most intimate relationship that you will have with someone aside from your romantic partner because we're building a baby together for a better word. But I think on the flip side, a superpower that we gain from that is just like really transparent feedback that we can give each other. And what I mean by that is we have a foundational relationship already built over the course of the past like seven to ten years. And not ten years. We're not that old. Build over the past like five. But because of that, we're able to give each other feedback in a way that we know comes to real place of love. And I'll give you a concrete example. In the early days, obviously, you know, like Kiki's our social media star. In the early days, I would like to make this little video and be like, what do you think? And she'd be like, "Wow, that's bad. You can't boss that." And I'd be like, "Okay, yeah, that's so fair." And because we're best friends, you can give me that really candid feedback. And I like to take no effects to it. And we are looking out for each other's best interests. Whereas if we were just co-founders that had met on the basis of us building a company together. And it'd be more difficult to give really raw candid feedback without harnessing the relationship. And I think that's just been something that is enabled us to move really quickly and build the best product we can build because we can get that raw feedback to each other. Yeah, that's such a good point. It's really hard, I think, if you don't have that foundation of trust to be able to feel like it's safe, to be honest and to be direct. And it's really hard to actually be honest. I know I struggle with being really direct and honest in my communication or rather like in what I need or how I feel about certain things across all types of relationships. And oddly enough, I felt there were like there have been experiences in the past in my life where it was harder for me to be super direct and honest with the people I was closest with. So it's interesting that you've found it to be easier because you're so close and you've had this longstanding friendship before launching Benny. Like that foundation actually made it easier because for me in certain instances, I've actually found it to be harder to be really honest with like some of my closest friends. And I don't know why that is, but like maybe it feels like the stakes are higher when you are like giving someone that you are really close with like a hard truth or a hard truth that it's hard for you to even accept. I totally agree with that. I think that's why it's like, don't build a company with your best friend, but I think there are some best friends that you can build a company with. And I think that's how I feel or at least we feel together is I agree. There are some difficult conversations that I put off with other friends versus with a lawn. I think there is always an underlying level of respect that we have for each other and also a lack of competition that we have, which I think is a really important thing is in deep acceptance for the strengths of the other person and knowing that we are very similar, but also very different. And we're never going to be competing in the same round because of those things. And I think it makes feedback a lot easier too because a piece of feedback for her is in no way a dig is in no way a manifestation of an insecurity. It is truly just to make our company and make ourselves better. And I think that's a really important part of this is sometimes in other friendships. I have found that there's like that slight component, especially with women. And so this is really doesn't happen. Yeah. I think that's a really important call out, especially with the ability to identify where your strengths are and to give each other the permission to lean into that. Kiki, you're the social media person. And that's fantastic because it's in the benefit of the company as a whole, right? And along like your deep, I feel like in the expertise and like, I mean, you tell me more because I think we talked a little bit about it actually during the walk, but given your background too and like being a product manager, like I feel like maybe you take more of like the business perspective around the brand as well. Yeah. I think the way we see CPG businesses is sort of like two pivotal areas that you need to like do really, really well in order to succeed. And one is like marketing and distribution, which is like Kiki's the engine for this. I think one of my favorite quotes is the best product doesn't win the good enough product with the best distribution wins. And I think that's like really, really key, especially in consumer. And then the second component is just like logistics and execution, which is anything from like, can you make a product that tastes good? Can you figure out where to produce it at scale and cold chain and all that kind of other stuff that is like actually producing the product? And that's sort of like how we've divided labor, so to speak, for venue up to this point, which is like Kiki's head down laser focus on marketing distribution. And I'm head down laser focus on like the product and getting it off the ground. And this has just been extraordinarily helpful. I think we often say like we could not do this without each other. I can be making the best product in the world, but like if no one knows about it, it doesn't matter. And Kiki could be like, go viral like crazy, but if she's not actually building a product, then it doesn't matter. So we kind of need each other in this way. And it's really important, especially in consumer. Yeah, definitely not to bring it back to this NYU conference, but it's just all very top of mind for me. There was another talk about creating organizations that flourish. So employees flourishing and feeling a sense of purpose and the work that they're doing. And a big component of that is the sense of mattering, like feeling like you matter. And what I'm hearing you say along is like, if it wasn't for Kiki, then X, Y, Z wouldn't happen. And what Kiki saying is if it wasn't for a long, then X, Y, Z wouldn't happen either. So clearly there's like a strong sense of mattering to one another and to the broader mission that you're trying to accomplish. And I think that's so important and that is what will give longevity to what you're building. So I love what I'm hearing. I want to pivot a little and talk about where your aspirations are as you're continuing to build. And I know you haven't launched yet. more towards like an mid to end of 2025 horizon, but can you talk a little bit about where you're at in the process right now and what you're most excited for as we move throughout this year? - So in the way we've sort of thought taking an approach to like the CPU business, especially for us, we've probably selected the hardest consumer product you can choose, being that it's like a dairy perishable, like animal-based product that you know, relies on very short shelf lives. And so given that, we decided to take a pretty different approach to CPG, which is that instead of going and producing the product and packaging and then trying to get retailers to sell it and then distribute it to people, we flipped it on its head and we're like, "Hey, how can we build demand and distribution before we even have a product?" So that by the time we go to production at large volumes, there's already like a line out the door, so to speak, of people who are excited and ready to buy the product. We don't have the privilege of just being shelf stable, where like we could produce a ton and throw it in a storage unit and then sell it over time. So like we need to have the people who want to buy it, ready to go once we're producing. And so that's been the focus. Now we're at a point where we've built up a wait list of like hundreds and hundreds of people in New York City, you are like eager and ready to try our yogurt. And we've even gone in, down from grocery stores and small retailers who like are asking if they can carry it and offices and whatnot, which is amazing, but now we have to produce. So the number one focus right now for us is like getting to production as quickly as possible and finding the right partner to help us produce. - I think that's such a clever approach. It reminds me of at least how I observed other ship launch in New York City. So they started, I'm sure the both of you are familiar with other ship, the Sauna Cold Plunge Studio. For those who are listening and they don't know what it is, it is such an incredible community and third space. That's kind of the way I like to think of it. I actually interviewed one of the co-founders and did an event with them. And I'm also an ambassador, so shameless plug. If anyone wants to go, I have a discount code. It's in my bio. (laughs) And what I will say is like they are Toronto based, they came to New York in the spring, summer of 2024. And we're offering like these pre-opening class experiences which generated so much hype in the community. And then when they finally did launch, classes were just sold out. And so the point I'm trying to make is when you really hone in on building the hype and the community and the buy-in from people, it can kind of help set you up for more success when you actually go to launch and have the physical product or the actual experience. Because you already have a community of people that are like buying into this concept and idea. If I were to have done the podcast differently, I feel like I would have focused on, I guess becoming more of an influencer first. And then deciding to launch an interview-based platform. But I kind of took the opposite approach because all of this stemmed from like a passion project during COVID and wanting to interview people and wanting to learn, 'cause I'm naturally a chatter. So, and then I was like, oh wait, I kind of like this. How do I build a community around it? So there's not one right way to do things in life, but I will say there is value to starting with community led initiatives first and then coming in with the experience or the product. And so I'm excited to see how things kind of evolve for the two of you. And there's just so much opportunity to continue collabing and doing all the things that you're already doing. So I'm really excited to kind of watch as you go along this journey. I'd love to pivot a little bit as we kind of wrap up the interview and hear from the both of you about your own perspective on happiness. So the first question that I'll ask is, how do you define happiness and joy in life? - I have thought about this, but I think there's a distinct difference between joy and happiness. I think a lot about joy in my day to day and there are so many small things that bring me joy. I love to get my nails done and this brings me joy. Looking at my fingers as I type, seems like the girliest and most feminine thing, but it brings me so much joy. For getting to cook a meal for my sister and my boyfriend and my friends, like that brings me so much joy. Is that deep happiness? No, but I think that I like to curate spaces in my life and make choices that bring me joy throughout the day. So it's something I actively think about on that front. Happiness, I think, doesn't necessarily translate in the same way. I think something that brings me happiness can also be really hard and arduous and not always the most comfortable and you have to work through things or work hard at things and part of that actually brings happiness. It's not just the easy living, it's actually accomplishment and it's creating value and it's learning and so putting myself in situations that expand allows me to expand and grow, often brings me a lot of happiness because it sort of allows me to find my edges and figure out what I really want and there are such deep, I guess I'm sort of equating happiness and satisfaction but I think they're very one and the same for me and allows me to understand who I am better which brings me closer to that happy state. Well, tell me about the edges, what do you mean by that? So let's just take a very tangible example. I'm living alone and that was a huge move for me to move out of living with best friends to live solo and that was really hard. The first year I moved out and had to sit with myself in the dead of winter in New York City and my tiny little apartment, I did not like that and now I've found a year later such comfort and being able to own my space and have a little sanctuary for myself and actually retreat into that loneliness and that solo miss of it all has actually brought me a lot of happiness but it took that initial hump to actually get comfortable there and I just sit in the discomfort before I actually sort of made it to the other side and that's what makes being here alone on my couch so much better is because I've learned and I've experienced, I've expanded to be able to sit in this. I love that. I have thoughts but I wanna hear a lot on how you define happiness. I haven't thought about it in the way that GD has, I think. It's hard to put a definition, I'm curious what your definition is, Stella, to what it is but like I can equate the feeling like in experiences if that makes sense. Like the times that I've felt happiest are the times when I'm like surrounded by friends and everyone's like together doing something fun or just like hanging out. Like that's like the time where I can like distinctly recall I feel the most like content or happy is like when I know all my people are in one place and like we're spending time together. I think Tiki's point to like I get a lot of satisfaction from doing hard things but I'm not convinced that that's also like happiness to be explicit. There's a lot of just like things like he said that just bring joy like eating a chocolate chip cookie would see salt is something that will always bring me joy. But like you know. We'll get for the what brings me joy thing later because that's actually my last question is like what brings you endorphins and you kind of gave of me a little bit of a preview of what brings both of you endorphins but we'll get there in a second. So lots of follow up thoughts. Well I'll go to yours first a lot because as I explain my thoughts I will share my answer to. So I would argue that the reason that you probably feel happiest in moments of being with your friends altogether is because A) your present you were grounded in where your feet are right in that moment. We are so distracted especially living in a city like New York and growing up with social media basically and now being on social media all the time not only do you use it for your personal life but also for your business right there's a push and pull there to be tied to our phones in that way. So we don't often actually create opportunity in life especially in our age range and this generation in particular to be present like to sit with ourselves and that goes back to your point Keke like being alone right like how do we learn to enjoy our own company but then when we think about this concept of being present the act of being present I think eradicates any sort of anxiety because you're not future tripping and then you're not like ruminating on the past which is more so like depression. So anyways all that goes to say I think presence is probably one of the reasons why you feel happy in those moments and the second is connection because you're around people that make you feel good and the research in positive psychology points to this exact experience where one of the strongest predictors to our well-being and our satisfaction in life is the strength of our interpersonal relationships. So when I ask the final question that I'll ask the both of you what is and it brings you into orphans the most common response that I get has something to do with either a connecting with oneself or b connecting with other people. So it goes back to this point on relationships actually being very centric to feeling a sense of happiness that is a sustained feeling of happiness in one's lifetime and that also ties into I think what we were talking about earlier with like focusing on community first it's creating those relationships and that connection to get people rallied around a mission and a shared excitement for what you're building and that is community that is connection. So that is just like one little thought I had on your response alone and then to your point Kiki I think that there's so much to be said around sitting with discomfort and the way I like to define happiness will oscillate depending on the interviews that I do and who I talk to and like what new thing I experienced in my life but what I will say is that I've recently heard in a podcast Someone was interviewed by Esther Proud. during South by and somehow the topic of happiness came up. And I was like, oh my God, I should be in this conversation. But the guest was saying how her perspective is that the happiest people are the ones that are the most comfortable with not knowing things. And I was like, yeah, yeah, why is that? Oh, it's because we surrender to not knowing. We are accepting what is and we're not trying to control every little aspect of our lives. We're okay with sitting with discomfort, with sitting alongside the unknown and the ambiguity. I think that that's what brings a sense of true happiness in life is learning how to dance alongside all the shit that you can't control, which is different than joy. It's those little cherry-picked moments that give you that sense of endorphins and happiness enjoy. So to that point, what are things in life that give you endorphins? It's grounded on like what's one thing that maybe you do every day, like a ritual or practice, whatever it is for you. What's that one thing that brings you bit of endorphins every day? I'm laughing because I know what a long answer is going to be. Wait, do you want me to say it? Crossfit working out. It's exercise, yeah, it's exercise. Yeah, he knows. It's a contract to the research. I love it. It's everything you said that like endorphins kind of come from like connection and being with people and having those moments. I would also argue that you can get pretty good endorphins from like physical things, whether it be like exercise and doing like a hard work out and they're feeling you get after or like eating something that you really love and it's like kind of like this physical sensation that you get for meeting that thing. But yeah, I think that every day thing that will always be endorphins is exercise. Yeah, I love it. I also, the days that I move my body, I'm way happier. So I stand by that. What about you, Kiki? Yeah, I agree with Alon's for what it's worth. But to keep it different, I would say it is, I mean, it is the connection. So it's like, oh, hanging out with seeing my sister, my boyfriend or Alon, like those are like my three anchors that always I know can give me the hits. And then the last one is reading, reading before bed. It doesn't just call me, but it gives me such a sense of pleasure. And that's the best. I could learn a thing or two from you because I need to read more. One, and it's good to do it before bed because it also helps me fall asleep. So maybe that will be my, we're already almost, well, we're not halfway through the year yet. I was going to say it's my new year's resolution halfway, but it's never too late. You're Kiki resolution. Exactly. It's never too late to start a better habit. But I really loved your responses. And it truly was such a pleasure to get to sit down with the both of you and chat about your stories and what you're building. I, as I think I mentioned earlier, like I've tried Benny and I love it. And there's such a bright future ahead for what you're building. So very excited to follow along. And to that point, where can my listeners follow along and connect with you and get on the wait list? So please follow, you can find us on socials at couch woman. So my last name is couch man, but couch woman, I've been posting sort of my founder journey from there. You can follow Benny's account to @eatbenni, e-a-t-b-e-n-y, and that's where we post events and upcoming things. And as we get product, we will be posting a lot more once we've launched, but currently it's just online. And then to sign up for our starter crew, which is the only place that you really can get our yogurt at this point, it's epeany.com/startercrew, and you'll see that in all of our bios. So give us a follow and I'm excited to continue building in public. We'll be able to see everything we do. Amazing. Thank you both so much. This was so wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you Stella. Appreciate it. Thanks for tuning into this episode of Everyday Endorphins. If you liked what you heard and you want to continue to follow along, make sure to like, rate, review, and subscribe to this podcast on whichever listening platform you prefer. You can also follow along on Instagram, on TikTok, and subscribe to my subs stack, where I not only talk about episode recaps or events that have happened that month, but I get to dive a little bit deeper into my own perspective and philosophy on joy and happiness and living a good life. Thanks again for tuning in and reminder to keep spreading endorphins and finding the things in life that bring you joy. Until next time. (upbeat music)