THE SCIENCE OF TRUST w/ Seed´s Co-Founder

Meet Ara Katz, co-founder of Seed, the microbiome science company pioneering innovations in probiotics and postbiotics. Seed's work spans from gut and skin health to coral re-frustration and even microbes in space. Before founding Seed, Ara worked in media, design and tech. After a personal health experience reshaped her perspective, she set out to reimagine how science is communicated. Are you mad enough to do it differently? We are. We've built brands, launch tech and gone viral. And felt mad every step of the way. I'm Nia Pokrypka. And I'm Alisa Odell. In each episode of Mad Women, we dive into the methods behind the madness. Talking to the creatives, founders and brand leaders coming through the noise and shaping culture. Before we dive in, just give us 10 seconds of your time. There are two things we want to design. The first is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week. It means the world to us. It truly does. Second, if you've been enjoying what we're building here, hit the follow right now. That way, you won't miss the next creative mind we sit down with or the next story that changes how you see the world. Thank you so so much. Now back to the episode. In this episode, Ara shares how she and her team transformed microbiome science into a cultural movement, bridging the gap between cutting edge science and everyday life. In this episode, we get into why you can't brand your way to trust. Seeds, anti-gay keeping approach to knowledge, the most underrated ingredient product design, launching the first vaginal symbiotic and evolving women's health, and why AI can be a tool for empowerment, not replacement. This is the Science of Trust. Welcome to the madness. You're so excited to have you and your 76 trillion micro organisms with us on the show today. Ara cats, welcome to mad women. Thank you so much for having me. For those who aren't yet familiar, can you introduce us to seed? Sure. So seed is a microbiome science company. We pioneer innovations in biotics for human and environmental health. It's kind of a fancy way of saying that we work in the field of microbiome. Looking at the science that's coming out of the community of 38 trillion, microbes that live in and on us, and primarily the guide, most people know they've got microbiome, but there are other biomes of the body that we also do research in and develop products for. Looking at how you nurture and impact the microbiome for various both life stages, as well as conditions and needs states, from everything from sleep to how you think about daily nutrition, to in the case of the product that we're most known for, which is DSO1, really thinking about kind of whole body health as it relates to nurturing the microbiome for, you know, of course, gut and digestive health, which is kind of what most people think about, but also, you know, got immune function, cardiovascular health, dermatological and skin health, and other very boring technical pieces. But for the most part, we set up seed to be this kind of translator between this frontier field of microbiome and taking some of that best science and then translating that into innovations of biotics. And for both human, you heard me say human and planetary health. The human health part is kind of what we're known the most for. But we also do environmental research looking at everything from like probiotics for honey bees and coral reefs, to also thinking about how you can use microbes for things like plastic degradation as well. That's what me and I have been so impressed by is that you've made science accessible for our gut and you provide so much information on your website. And I have to tell you, Chad G.P.T. love seed. And when we're telling you why, we've heard this, we've heard this. But you got a brand advocate in Chad G.P.T. I know. We did a big influencer deal with them last last year. I'm not sure. I'm working. I'm like, oh, because that was a joke. I almost believed you for a second. I almost a two, but then I was like, wait a second. That's not how it works. But I have to tell you, I had it do a comparison of all the different products on the market. And I was telling about like it apparently, my name is Sol, I asked it its name, which was very weird. But it gave me a full breakdown of what was going to be best for me. And that's how I decided on seed. Wow. Yeah, I've, we've heard this before, which is kind of a really interesting figure out how we got that way. And you know, it hasn't always, you know, Chad G.P.T. has really entered our life in the past year. But I think what's really interesting for seed is that there's been so many gut health products on the market. It's beyond overwhelming as a consumer. But seed has definitely cut through the noise. You guys are very present digitally and on the shelves, including Target. Can you let us your secret to how you cut through the noise? Like how did you do this? Oh, I mean, you know, I look, I wish there was just like one simple, one simple answer and playbook. I would say, you know, the first and foremost, you know, I think everyone just immediately goes to brand and communication and marketing. I think, you know, you, you, I'm a bit more Steve Jobs in the sense that, you know, it starts with an exceptional product. If you, if you didn't have a product that actually we got, you know, I don't even know how many times a day we hear that it changes somebody's life, we wouldn't have been able. We probably would have cut through the noise to some extent because I think we're really good science communicators, we're really good marketers, we're good, we're good storytellers, we're good at brand, we're good at aesthetics. All those things are really important parts of the formula, but I think more than anything it started with having an exceptional product. I think just to use Steve Jobs as another great example, like if you ever see the clips where he talks about Apple versus Microsoft, I think, you know, it was of course the first product and the extraordinary science that went into that. The second is what, you know, I think he often references as taste. And I think taste is something that you can't buy and you can't put an adec and you can't manufacture. I think you had something that needs to be known and needs to be endemic to who is creating and cultivating these things that go out into the world. And that has everything to do with what goes out into the world in terms of what the quality of the product is. But it also has to do with the discernment that you and the way that you show up in the world. And I would say the third piece before you get into some of maybe the more obvious and I can talk more about how we go about things like design and things like that. The third is culture, which Steve Jobs also talks a lot about, which is one of the biggest differentiators he would always talk about as it relates to Apple versus Microsoft, which is this notion that culture needs to be embedded in your product. Obviously, it's a kind of pun in our world because literally the microbes are cultured when they're fermented when they're when they're when they're grown. And culture in our mind meant a lot. I think you kind of said it, which was we were able to kind of come into the cultural zeitgeist and also embed the microbiome into a brand in a way that we've been able to really steward the conversation about the microbiome and got, you know, amidst kind of the gut mania and really emerge, I think as the, you know, the host of this dialogue. That's a beautiful, beautiful way that the, you know, I think that has sometimes I'd love to take full credit. I think that has a little bit also to do with timing of as you were tracking earlier about companies that you guys have started like a lot of so much of products and have things come into the world is within your control and some of it is also timing. And that people need to be ready to walk through the door that you're giving them and I think that, you know, the gut health and got mania was just kind of just starting, but people weren't really understanding the microbiome. They were just understanding like some probiotics and a little bit about, you know, those that got so important, but there was not a lot of specificity there. And so, and then, you know, that, that then those kind of few things, then of course it comes down to how do you do all that and what does it look like? What does it smell like? What does it taste like? What does it feel like when it shows up at your house? What does it look like on a website? Who are the people you align yourself with in the world? You know, all the, you can go through kind of 360 around marketing and brand, you know, touch points of how you brand and the company show up in the world. But I think at the core of those were some of the key pieces and I think always holding science as our North Star and the integrity of that science and that and then of course that's what made the great product and everything can it came from there. I want to dive a little bit more into that like communicating the science piece of that because, you know, before seed the microbiome, you know, it wasn't exactly sexy, if you will. You know, like I think seed you guys took it from the lab, the shelf, you know, at health food stores and you really made people care about their gut health. How did you guys actually pull that off? Well, I think in some ways we treated our product for a really long time like fight club. So I think, you know, first of all, fight club, you know, talk about fight club. And like I always felt I would always be against like putting posts of our product on Instagram, which is sounds so counterintuitive and for a long time, like we really relegated places that we talk about product very, very, very few touch points. And we focus and we were always inspired by this kind of ethos, which I think is really important because you said, how do you communicate science and most other companies just call that marketing. And I think that's really important distinction because, you know, I remember, I remember when I first read this quote, was by this guy whose name is Sir Mark Wolpert, he was a. advisor to the UK government, he gave a talk about climate, totally separate from microbiome. But in this talk, he said, science isn't finished until it's communicated. And I think that always really created for me a kind of accountability and responsibility that, you know, there's one thing to market things and tell them how great your product is, which of course we, you know, we do that too. But it's another thing to take on the stewardship of how a field is translated into public, into the public domain and into culture. And we always just decided like that was going to be that that was, I mean, first of all, I wasn't like, decision, it would be sat in the meeting or like, hey, are we going to sell out or are we going to do this thing? You know, it was just, that was just our DNA from the very beginning. I think that the fact that science communication is actually like a discipline within seed is very different. And of course, it works very closely with marketing, works very closely with growth and brand. But our brand was really this, this vehicle to a messenger from the front lines of saying, hey, this field of science is moving at a crazy velocity. It's really this like new biology. And it's a really beautiful new way to understand your body. And also the things you can do for your health today, which, you know, a lot of frontier science is not actionable today. A lot of the things that we learn about the microbiome are actually actionable. Like today, you could, like, you could literally change something today that changes your microbiome. And it's also the microbiome is influential, meaning it's, it's a very dynamic and it's very responsive to change. And so knowing that I think we felt and then knowing that we were working with some of the best scientists in the field to have really never affiliated themselves also with like a non-academic or, you know, commercial enterprise, I think we just felt a tremendous amount of accountability to do that well. But then, you know, what I'm saying could of course come out very academic and dry. But then the big challenge of communication is really then figuring out, you know, another, another tenant that I use, use with the team all the time is Marshall McLuhan wrote like this really famous book in the late 70s called Understanding Media. And if you, and given what you guys do, if you haven't read it, I highly recommend it. It's short book. But that's where the, quote, the medium is the message comes from. So then the big challenge and I think the really exciting in the part that was the art, less the science was how do you shape shift what's how science has always been communicated and do it in a way that is culturally relevant and can be heard and listened to you and doesn't dumb down, but also meets people where they are, but also then takes them by the hand and guys and somewhere else. And that was really the, what are the mediums? How do you change expectations? Like what you would do on Instagram and how do you kind of become a bit the antidote to the way everybody else was doing it because you know, science can feel so cold and clinical and very complex. And that's partially why people don't, a, don't enter the field, b, why you can have misinformation and things like, you know, air situations like what happened during COVID happened because the way that we communicate this is often even the, even with the best intentions is often just like not able to be heard. And I think that was really our developing our own language, which we did kind of, and we have a codified and this interesting document was really the way of sturdying that idea that science isn't finished until it's communicated. I love that quote. Can you give us an example of how you guys did that? Well, I mean, you know, I think, I mean, I think in some ways, you know, I mean, we were doing streetwear collaborations, right? So, you know, we, we are, you know, I mean, our first, I remember, I remember our first, yeah, we, by the way, I just found one of those on eBay for $300. So I was like, very proud of myself for that. But that on LinkedIn. Yeah, totally, totally. I, you know, we, we, I think that the answer is how is a long conversation, but I will make it very short, which is we did really interesting. I think first and foremost, we spoke in a way and had, had a, had a tone of voice and a language that was very new at the time. The second is that our design aesthetic was very, very new again at the time. There are many things that look very similar to see today. It's a different conversation. Actually, packaging. I feel like you guys were one of the first, yeah, supplement packaging totally. And, you know, it's, I think the world could be more original, but anyway, nonetheless, I think the design aesthetic communicated something very different because typically things that are beautiful have no science and things that are not beautiful have science. So I think the idea of creating an aesthetic around science, in our case, the green had a lot to do with our belief in the environment, our belief in one health, which is that human and environmental health are so intertwined and in co-mingled that the idea that we talk about one without the other is kind of absurd. And it had to do also with this notion of, you know, being, you know, thinking about the fact that people have to live with your product too, which again, usually things that are lifestyle or things that are beautiful are just not like coming out of the best labs in the world. It's usually just there's always an, actually in some ways, there's a bias against things that are too beautiful as if they couldn't then have efficacy and be scientific. And so I think we thought a lot about, you know, I come from human-centered design. And so we thought a lot about the way that this shows up in the world aesthetically. And I have one in a ton of awards for it. We also thought about it from a sustainability perspective. So a lot of our sustainability efforts, the way we go about offsets, the way we think about investing in environmental research, I think all of those things. And then of course, some of our partnerships and collaborations and interesting things that we did along the way, we sent microbes up into space, we partnered with NASA, we've, you know, we've, we've done such, I think, interesting things that it goes back to those core tenants, right, which is, you know, from in terms of embedding yourself in culture, stewarding the conversation about the microbiome. And if you hear what I'm saying, very few of the things I'm talking about actually had to do with just like selling a product. And I think ultimately, and you mean you look at the, you know, BCG studies about us or you look at brand NPS scores and you look at the word clouds that come up when we do big insights work, it is trust, it is science and its efficacy. And it's very interesting because that wasn't the things that we then, we weren't investing in saying like our product is amazing. And as I said that it happened in very small places, but it was this like larger vision to say, let's be the steward of, of this conversation about, like you said, about, about the microbiome and its importance in human health. And let's walk the walk around sustainability. Let's not just put a cute packaging together. Let's actually invest in environmental research. Let's actually, you know, we just, and that wasn't again, we weren't sitting around in a meeting being like, should we walk the walk or should we sell out? It was just who we were, you know, it's just who we are. And I think that's, that's, that's the most important thing is we always knew who we were from day one. It's interesting because you definitely went against the D to C playbook. You know, I feel like we're seeing that conversation change right now, which I know you guys have expanded outside of D to C, but everything was just ad based, right? And you guys really, I love that you choose the word steward. I don't think I've heard a founder CEO say that. You know, the way you speak about seed and the microbiome and the science sounds so seamless. You clearly came onto the planet a very unique individual to see this opportunity and gain the wisdom. How did you get here? I know that's not really a question, but that's like running through my mind as I hear you speak. To feel brave enough to take a different stance of the microbiome and the way you enter the market, but like you clearly didn't just wake up one day and you're like, oh, seed, yes, this is how I'm going to do it. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure you guys know this from all the, well, both from your own journeys, but also from, I think the extraordinary people that you also get to interview and who sit in my little rectangle from time to time, you know, there's no, there's no one path as you guys know we were talking about earlier. I don't think there's any one story is on LinkedIn. I think the idea that we would reduce like, how did you get to that? So I just did this job and this job and this job and then I did and that's how I got here. And I think those like conversations are ridiculous because I think anything we're doing in this given moment is the confluence of all of our childhoods and influences and what's happening in the world externally and certainly some of the work that we've done, but I think it's much more a human journey than it is like a work journey. I've like personally hate the word career more than anyone, which actually the etymology, which just means like kind of course, which is kind of interesting. Yeah, so I mean to you, I have like a, I'm like obsessed with words, so I always like, I don't like, won't use a word and I certainly won't dislike a word until I understand it's origin origin. Which usually has some sort of patriarchal start, so I usually have like or religious, so there's a lot to like dislike about our like current language. But I do, I do, I think from a very young age, I was always creating things and so that's like kind of always not very organic to me. I think the quick hits for me is that, you know, my mom died when I was 16 and I started reading scientific papers when she got sick and I started understanding clinical trials at a very young age because I became very interested and obsessed with like being a problem solver and also understanding things. I am not somebody that can be just told something and then I say, I need to like deeply understand it and I learn, you know, the more you understand about human body and biology, you just ask better questions, you become a better advocate for your health and, you know, through the years, I always was that person, people just knew I just like knew a little more than the average bear and they would say like, do you know what about this? What about that? And I was never giving medical advice. I just kind of understood how to connect some dots and find good information or find the right expert, etc. So I kind of like put that aside, maybe that just sat in my back pocket for whatever reason for a long time. I started off in media and film. I made a bunch of movies. I ran a film fund and I'd always been my love of storytelling, kind of design and tech, can always kind of stuck with me through a very young age. I was coding HTML websites when I was, you know, to make extra money, fly through college. And then even after I was top myself, self-taught graphic design, I had always just loved design story. And I love sitting in dark rooms and watching people be moved by, you know, be moved by, like, you know, be moved by human stories. And I always felt that that's all brands were to me, really. And I remember when I came up when Nike was becoming a big. And I would always think about brands as like, I actually would, even from a young age, I would just think about like, who are the humans in the room making that? It wasn't like this, like a morphist just like, think to me. And so, you know, I got, I had finished my last like big film that I produced. And I had no interest in the film industry by that time. I had already kind of had a foot in tech. And I was, I became, I started two early companies in the e-commerce that were both in like subscriptions and one was in mobile. And I got to learn just scale. I got to learn how you put great engineering and product teams together. I would say that I probably don't care about the product companies in the sense that I don't know if I was fully aligned with what we were doing or doing. It wasn't like, I don't care about like, at my life's purpose, not to make great e-commerce experience. So, I think that that misalignment just became louder. To me, and I ended up having a miscarriage in 2015 when, or sorry, a little bit before that 2013 or 2014, that I was running and I was co-founding that I had co-found a mobile commerce company. And I was running back and forth between New York and LA. And it was amazing. We had signed 420 of the biggest worlds, biggest brands. And we were launching and there was people loved it. And it was all the things you kind of like, thank you on, especially women in tech. It's like, you're on all these cool lists and you're this. And at the end of the day, I had the miscarriage and I was like, what the fuck am I doing? Like, I don't-- this is not what I want to be creating in the world. That life-- this life just-- the life inside me wasn't viable. But I felt that the life I was living wasn't really viable and what I wanted to be creating. And I resigned from that company, which as a woman in tech, was not a very easy thing to do. And I felt-- really first time I felt like I was letting people down, which was like a very new feeling for me to try on to choose yourself. And very shortly after that, I met my co-founder. And I think being-- and I also got pregnant very shortly after that, too. Having had the miscarriage, reminding myself about how that biology works, which is actually quite extraordinary, that your own body knows that a feat-- that this new thing is not viable. If you could just imagine how extraordinary it is, obviously, we've made them very sad experiences. And I understand why for many women. And of course, depending on the stage, it happens. But mine was at eight weeks. So it was a little different from me. But I thought-- I thought it to be a miracle. And I also met my co-founder. And I think was very quickly brought right back into biology and brought right back to those moments when my mom-- when I started reading science and how much I loved it and how much I cared. But at the time when my mom was dying, I do remember reading all that science and just feeling like we were just missing such a big part of the picture scientifically and medically. And like, really, there's just so much we don't know. There's so much we didn't know. And it was so clear. And ship Hank Radden cancer. So it was like, even today, there's so much we can't do about that. And the microbiome-- I'll stop there. But that was the-- I met my co-founder. We clicked around. And he had been tracking microbiomes since 2006. And I think I had found my way back to my body to biology, to my love of science. He certainly was a big part of rekindling that. And I think we both felt that the microbiome was this next biological piece of the puzzle and that there was a really beautiful way to bring together his expertise in science, mind and building consumer brands and storytelling and tech and to make something that could really be impactful. And so that was the beginning. I just sounds like all that perfect combination that a founder wants to experience, the fact that you found alignment and your mission, found the right co-founder. It was the right time. It's so magical when you hear those stories. And thank you for breaking that down. Also, I was going to say, if your 16-year-old self could see you now-- I love thinking about my inner teenager. Yes. She could see you now. That's 100%. Speaking of the youth, this is a question me and I have to ask you. Why don't we learn about the microbiome in school? I mean, even doctors don't learn about it in medical school. But you three remember-- What do you mean? They don't learn about nutrition. So it's-- That's my word. Forget about frontier fields of science. They're not learning about nutrition either, which is probably one of the greatest forms of medicine we have. Even before you get to the microbiome, the reason is predominantly that it takes a pretty-- I mean, it's one thing for science to make its way to humans. It's actually even longer in many ways for science to make its way into the clinical environment. And when it's not in the clinical environment, it's then not going to be incorporated in medical schools and in the higher education. And that is a space that is really-- I think I know that there are some people doing interesting things in working on. But the clinical environment, particularly not functional. Functional and alternative medicine in this country have-- are probably one of the biggest propellants and reasons or accelerants of why the microbiome and gut health actually even went mainstream. So I would say not the fun-- I don't want to lump all science-- clenicians together. I would say traditional alipafic Western medicine has not yet embraced it partially because the science has accelerated so much in recent years. And it hasn't yet made its way into clinical guidelines, I think partially. It's because there aren't a lot of drugs that impact the microbiome or that are probiotics, his drugs, which are called live-byotherapeutics. There's only a couple that have been approved. And so really to reach that our medical systems-- again, keep in mind how much nutrition and science information is out there. And yet that even that hasn't informed even what patients eat in hospitals. So you can just imagine when you have a new field or a more novel field of science, it takes a long time for that to make it impact in the clinical environment. Unless there's a script and a code for it in their systems. And until that-- so it's a really, I think, burdened by our current systems of care more than anything else. And then to be making-- to change medical school curriculums is also quite an archaic process. And I think it's shifting a little bit. But there's still doctors are always the largest skeptics until things are proven as drugs, honestly. I really appreciate you breaking that down because something, at least, and I've been talking about a lot, has been what is the role of brands in educating us about things, especially when there's a financial component as a consumer. And so I don't think I really understood what you were talking about. And now it makes sense. Who else is going to share this information? Yeah, I think what happens is you have-- I think you have influencers on Instagram or on any, of course, any social media platform who become somewhat voices. I think some of them are more trusted than others, depending on what the domain of expertise is and what the science is. And I think-- so that's a huge way we've done a lot of studies and really influencers are the primary predominant way that people are getting health information, which is really interesting. Outside of, of course, that was done before. Chat TPC was as large scale as it is and widely used as it is today. But I still think that influencers, in a lot of these, whether or not they have an MD or PhD at all, or MD or whatever, their certification-- many of them are just science communicators or just literally just influencers. But that is where a lot of people are as consuming and hearing about these things. And so I think that's also where between influencers and the velocity of science that was happening out in the world, which was then making its way into posts and into the algorithm, I think that's a big part of how microbiome-- that plus, of course, the fact that many people are so sick and with these very complex conditions-- 15% of the United States is diagnosed with IBS, which is extraordinary, really extraordinary, if you think about it. And that's just IBS. And that's just diagnosed. And so with the rise of autoimmune conditions and all of these complex systemic health conditions that really Western medicine and more traditional medicine has not been-- and the care system by which you can even see somebody, and then you get to a specialist, et cetera. It really is, of course, what's also driven the rise of functional medicine. And I'll turn it medicine. And of course, those are disciplines that really embrace the microbiome and were one of the first proponents of it. And so I think you have a confluence of things happening. But it's been very interesting to watch kind of the factors that have gone into it. Because if you think about it, it's really the only time in history where a field of science that is this new and frontier has made its way into consumer madness, right? And spending. And I think there's some crazy stat that one in three people in the United States is something for their gut health. Imagine we sequence the human genome. And it's not like anyone's-- of course, you can't do anything for your genome. But it's a really, really interesting field because of how actionable it is. And so how much it feels like you have agency with it. That's the-- I think that's exactly the piece of agency piece. I didn't know until-- started taking seed that there are more than just the microbiome. Like I didn't know there was-- skin, oral, peanut, vaginal, like microbiomes. Yes. Yeah. I mean, and each one of them is distinct and really, really different. And then at the same time, many of them are connected and signal one another and have a huge impact on one another. And you know, they're all part of your immune system, some capacity. Of course, they also have such a huge impact in areas where there isn't even like necessarily a microbiome, but a lot of communication that's happening like the gut brain access, for example. So the gut, you know, make creating metabolites that aren't microbes that are like circulating or either between them, you know, going right up, you know, there's messages and happening across the vagus nerve. And then there's metabolites that the microbiomes making going into the blood and signaling the brain. And so these are, but this is obviously a very hot topic just because, you know, the gut brain access is what controls your feelings of satiety. And so with GLP1s and everything, of course, these topics are then again, culturally accelerated because people are starting to hear words like satiety. And it took GLP1s to kind of start to like initiate even that part of the conversation. And so the microbiome, when people just say it, they typically mean the gut because the gut is the most dense and the most diverse of all of your microbiome to the body. But the vaginal microbiome for women's health is probably, I would say, I'm writing a book on that now. You know, if you think about one of the key frontiers and areas that's going to be the greatest accelerant where I think women's health will fundamentally change, it is with the vaginal microbiome. And the more we understand that ecology, the more we are going to have solutions to all of these unmet needs that are really quite solvable when you understand the microbiome, which is really exciting. This is exactly where we want to get into. And, you know, you just want to the few companies with the symbiotic specifically designed for vaginal health. Why was it important for you to develop the product that centers women's needs in a space that so often overlooks us? Oh, I mean, I don't even know it again. Like, if you, when you look at the stats of like how underrepresented and how under invested and how much our framework and understanding of our bodies and our stories about our bodies and our doctor stories about our bodies and the way that they were educated and how subjugated and subverted like our health has been through history, you just like you either can like run through a wall and you could already hit your head against the wall. Or you can do something about it, you know, and I think, you know, as I said, just go back to what I said earlier, I'm somebody that when I understand something, and I understand a problem, like I just have a compulsion to fix it. And when you look at the unmet needs in women's health and I'll I'll categorize an unmet need as everything from recurrent vaginal recurrent vaginitis, recurrent back, you know, bacterial vaginosis, UTIs every time you have sex, pre-tremors, pre-clampsia, etc, all PCOS, etc. All the way to your best friends who are just like, I just always feel like some things off and they don't even have a diagnosis, right? So it's like it's not just solving some big disease or some diagnosis because I think what we understand as women is that our health is very dynamic and it's constantly shifting. You get your you you menstruate and then you feel off or you menstruate and you have sex with a new partner and you're like, fuck I'm gonna get a UTI or you're you know, you're just like it's it's a part of your consciousness if you have a body, you have a vagina, you have a body that menstruates or or doesn't menstruate or stopping menstruating or it's kind of stopping menstruating or it's about to start menstruating, you know, we go through such dynamic moments throughout our whole life and I saw particularly that, you know, the microbiome, as I said to me, was like this big answer, bait or I should say big, very big missing piece from a biological perspective in terms of our understanding of health, our bodies, etc. But also has the potential to be a place where solutions to some of our biggest problems can be found and as I said some of the problems are not just what do you do about recurrent bacterial vaginosis but it's also two other things. One is what do you do about the women who's just always off and they don't even have a diagnosis and their doctor tells them nothing's wrong and they know intuitively something doesn't feel right and they go to a million people and then they have to go to Reddit and find their best friends because you're just like nobody's giving me good answers and then you have the third tranche of part of our experience which is I don't have any problems but I would love to do something to make sure that I can be as optimal and healthy as possible because I want to have children or because I just want to know that this is vaginal health is something that's like I don't do anything for but I would love to so that I can make sure that I don't have any other issues in the future. And so you know the vaginal microbiome is an extraordinary ecology because it's totally different than the gut microbiome. So if the gut is you want to like diverse you want it dense like you want this like lush rain forest in your gut and you want it healthy functioning. In the vagina you want no diversity you want it dominated by one specific type of micro really which is the specific you know strain of lactobacillus and you want to let it and just a very quick science lesson lactobacillus micro your vaginal microbiome is responsible for creating your your producing lactic acid so that your vagina can be very acidic so it's the right pH so that it is the wrong environment for E. coli and a bad environment for pathogens but a good environment for healthy function and healthy healthy pH and healthy like a mucosa functioning which is kind of part of your if you think about it the vaginal microbiome is kind of like your vaginal immune system. And so and it's part of your whole immune system it's not just like just your vaginal immune immune system if you have inflammation somewhere else it affects your vagina and if you have inflammation your vagina it affects somewhere else so it's all kind of connected and so once we understood that we had been working with Dr. Jacques Ravel who is like the leading vaginal microbiome scientist in the world who kind of created the field he filed for the first NIH grant really fun fact he got denied his first grant because the NIH said that women wouldn't know how to swab their own vaginas to which he you got to be kidding me. He had to then go do an entire study to have women swab their vaginas and show them that the women who swab their vaginas and the vaginas that the scientists swabbed were the same we'll look the same. We use diva cups and tampons come on. I know I was gonna ask you how do you test pH but you're really fast on sitting around you but I will speak for me you're blowing our minds because we're people who I feel like I've always been a little head of wellness. Yes. Scientific knowledge coming out and I had no I I feel like doctors always look past this like oh your pH will rebalance oh it's not real don't use a vaginal steam like I just remember hearing all these things and when you said PCOS my little brain lit up because I have PCOS and I'm like how is that all connect? Yes. I had no idea so of course you're writing a book. That means so much fun. I'm so glad you are excited about this because sometimes when you write a book about things that are like newer you're like is anyone gonna care about this but yes it is a huge deal because if your vaginal microbiome is off like and is in what they call dysbiosis like it can't function and if it can't function you are really vulnerable and susceptible to infection and other issues and reproductive, gynecological and Eurogenital issues and so we had known about what the we know what the science is meaning we know what the optimal vaginal microbiome was because of Dr. Revelle's 15 years of work and our job was to figure out how to create a product that could transition any vaginal microbiome into a healthy and optimal vaginal microbiome and it took you know six plus years it was originally intended to be a drug which it's still going through some age drug trial for HPV but we saw the results and we decided to make it available to women sooner as a consumer product it's actually in the US it's regulated as a cosmetic because it's a respiratory and it was the result of genomics work a lot of scientists working for many many years to understand this specific microbiome of our bodies and it's also really important to think about what we what we created was a three-strain of the specific type of lactobacillus plus acid bioplus the prebiotic so the compounds that those microbes need to flourish in the vagina and it's a it's a tablet that you insert you do it as a first month of like what we call a reset which is six tablets so it's one day one you know seven 14 21 28 after your menstru after your menstruate and then two tablets a month after that and what we were able to demonstrate was that within 21 days 90% of the participants in our trial which is really quite unheard of in clinical research had successfully become their their their vaginal microbiome was kind of dominated by the specific type of lactobacillus and then ultimately the mo you know in that kind of what I'm quote optimal state and so that was a huge and I'll say that why this is so important is because there's no other way to get bacteria into your vagina than to put it there in the gut you can eat fermented foods you can take probiotics you can you can do all of these things for your microbiome the only way to get good bacteria into your vagina is to put it there for the most part there are some studies that are saying that that ingestible like oral have some colonization it's early there's a few studies but for the most part the most effective way to do it is to put it locally into the vagina and and because you can imagine you take a course of antibiotics well if you're not doing anything to kind of replant the garden. You're just leaving an open playing field for the opportunistic pathogens that were there before to like move right back in because nothing's changing the environment. And so you that's partially why you see so much recurrence with all of these antifungals and antibiotics and women trying different things and boric acid and all that because you're just like you're you're scorching earth which is sometimes necessary but then you're not actually replanting any of the forest so to speak. And so we really wanted to create the what is that replanting because of course that's a beautiful much more sustainable no-side effect way of you know really sustaining your health not just in the short term but also in the long term which is really what we spent so much time doing and for me it was like really one of the most I think one of those meaningful things I've ever launched and put out into the world. Quick pause if this is sparking something for you hit follow so you can stay in the loop. I have just like a user experience question about it. Is this something that we should just be kind of taking like you said you do a reset and then you have two times a month is that something that like just generally women should be doing or is this something that like if you were taking antibiotics or if you had an infection then you do some. So for me you know I think I think as I said that's why I kind of articulated the spectrum before yeah I think there are people who really would like to be who would like to proactively be supporting their health in the same way that I'm sure many of the wellness and science stuff that you guys talk about you know are much more proactive than they are reactive. So I think there's the proactive use case on an ongoing basis. If you stop we don't you know we don't have data beyond like the the length of our clinical trial today although that's being done but I think there's a lot of rationale given that you are going to continue to have sex you're going to continue to probably swim in chlorinated water you're going to continue to experience stress you may have to take an antibiotic for something totally unrelated to a vaginal issue you may take other medicines you may experience inflammation you may just live your life you may get a Brazilian wax you may do many things that impact the vaginal microbiome hygiene etc. That all impact your vaginal microbiome so our perspective is if you're just living your life and if you're a sexually active person why would you not do what you could to be as proactively and sexually active as an even needs it that mean it could oral sex like is one of the biggest ways you can get BVE so it's not just really all forms of sex and so for us it's like why wouldn't you want to just be a particularly if it's twice you know just two tablets a month it's not like something you have to do every day I think that for women who have serious conditions that I have to you know we don't we can't make any disease claims so I can't tell you that I can't talk about curing anything but I would say that the women who of course are our greatest power users are the women who have suffered so so unnecessarily for so long in some cases I think we have emails from you know women who have like 10 years of recurrent BB you know who are too ashamed to have sex with people right who have had odor for God knows how many years and and have felt a tremendous amount of shame about that and so of course you can imagine very similar to DSO one or any of our products that people who suffer usually are the highest intent because they're the people who are like what we call the try anything because they they they'll do anything to not feel that way anymore but I think from a proactive even and then of course once those people feel better and or for somebody who doesn't necessarily particularly suffer I think there's a lot of rationale if you're just like living in the modern world in the built environment that really wasn't built for our biology at all and we're seeing that in the form of impact of toxins and everything else in our bodies like the rationale to me would be you know your body's continually under stress biological stress so why not try and support an or trade on an ongoing basis everything you're saying is making me almost put tears in my eyes and makes me really mad yeah mad women really mad because I didn't even know like getting a Brazilian would impact my health and as a 38 year old woman who has actively sought out health information for so long to not know that my vaginal health is important that I've looked over it being friends with Mia is such a gift because she's very like let's talk about the patriarchy and the matriarchy and all the things that me have haven't even talked about the health of our vaginas and ever that are what you're doing feels like an active you know it's it's a this is why we wanted to speak to you because it's like you're using capitalism to be an activist for our health for longevity and that's really beautiful yeah I really appreciate that and it I try not to like it's funny I try not to get angry as much as I try to think about where we have agency you know I'm sure that's I have that reminder because I know but but angry anger is a beautiful catalyst for agency I think you know I think it really it it it really it also I think passion is like one of the most important things kind of like missing a little bit right now and some of the thing you know I think everyone just I think there's a lot of people you know creating companies from market opportunities and you know I think there's a lot of there's like some some real passion that's that's like needed to solve big problems and I think that obviously you guys are very inspiring and passionate and it's very infectious and I I think that that is what drives me and I I think that there in many ways like it was it was not even like really a question of whether or not to do it we just kind of always did the minute we knew that the science was there we just did it it wasn't again there was no meeting and I think in the companies where you know yourself the best you just go and I think we we just went and I'm very very proud that this this product lives out in the world and it's obviously in terms of putting tears in my eyes like you you were saying you're like you know you when you read the letters and the notes that we get from women it's exceptional and I think the only the part I get really mad and upset about of course is that this field could be accelerating so much faster if there was floods and floods of funding that could really to your point about PCOS and you know other other conditions I think there could be a much faster much faster answers which I hope with AI and I think some of the people that are working on so many important things I think it is possible but it does require prioritization you know and angry women. Check mark I have to tell you before we go into the next question I think I was a little dumbfounded so I'm from a rural town in Florida called homeessasa a town of 5,000 and like outside like you drive 30 minutes to target which still rural Florida I was home there recently and I saw seed including the vaginal supplement yes on the counter and that is wild that women in a rural part of Florida. Yeah like no I have the chills. It's like that wasn't I'm I grew up there my whole life you know that type of information wasn't even accessible to me and now someone when they're walking down the aisle looking at supplements they can think oh what is that and that is that's to me is even more powerful than scrolling tick-tock. Yeah absolutely I it's you know going on you know everything that we've always done has and one of the reasons we never put like all of our scientific information or any of our communication or some of our more prescriptive like here's how you can do this and we've never I've had so many times where like the growth person came in they're like let's put it behind the paywall you have to be a subscriber to access this and I've always I always said no and we've never ever made a piece of information non accessible to the public and one of the things about that of course is our original kind of value of access and you know I think that going on many channel has been profoundly interesting because you know these are not this is not somebody that's following you on Instagram and knows how cool you are as a brand or think you're pretty brand or they just think that this is something that might help their health and I think that that is like so profound and thank you for sharing that story because it it it really is why we are in it really is why we're in retail it is it's access and I think it's it's exciting that these things that you make that kind of start in these a little bit of the echo chambers can then kind of ripple out and truthfully it doesn't matter if a mom and target ever learns all the cool things that we say on our Instagram it really matters that ultimately she trusts us to potentially impact her health and I think that and or her families and so it's a beautiful beautiful part of of scale and scaling things that you create in birth it's it's you know probably equivalent to any of your kids at college which is kind of how it felt when we went when we launched into our yet. That makes sense. Yeah well you know on this note of women's health you know biohacking feels so much it's built towards men and their rhythms. How do you think the wellness industry can evolve to serve women better? Oh it's a great question I mean you know I think I think it first comes down to like the way that science has communicated in around all these trends you know first you get first you hear about creatine you know the way first creatine first got introduced in the United States and you think it's like for bodybuilding and then you know eventually it's like the biohacker bros or like I take creatine and you're like yeah it's still for like getting big though and you know and then all of a sudden everyone's like I'm gonna take creatine for like neurocognitive health and eventually someone's like oh shit like this could be game changing for women there's all the science behind you know and so I think a little bit is finding like really good first of all making sure your algorithm is surfacing people who understand the nuance and the difference between some of these different not just sex biological sex but also age so I think it's a little bit of who you're getting your information from that kind of is where some of this starts I think that and I think that's really important because I think if you think about cold plunging as an example you know everyone's like I'm just gonna start cold plunging and then you start to realize and learn that like well women women may respect on better heat and there's a lot of more research around that and that cold plunging right after you work out actually decreases muscles, you know, protein or muscles in the system. You know, doing these things, these things kind of come out and then everybody just like does them. And so I think I go back to what I was saying earlier about when I started to learn science because it just makes you ask better questions. And I think especially now with CHATGPT and AI, all the new really interesting health companies that are coming out, I think we have the opportunity to be such beautiful advocates for our health in a way that used to be a more one to many and like now we can really go and do our research in a very non, you know, it's so easy. It takes two seconds to sometimes find out some basic surface information. That's probably pretty okay. It's not like probably the best if you had someone doing like proper scientific lit dives, the way that we do them, but it's probably a pretty great place to start. And I think that the, so I think first and foremost, the who's saying these things and having some accountability that you're like articulating the nuance to your audiences and communities. And then on the side of the consumer and the human seeking kind of information following the right people and following people who do acknowledge that nuance and talk a lot about and just don't make it seem like the one thing they're saying is just means it's good for everybody because that's not always true. You know, and I think the second, the second thing that the wellness industry could do, I think is very similar, but then it comes down to like how that same mindset of nuance applies to products and starting to get really clear and more precise on their own products of like who it's for, who would benefit, who's probably a likely responder and non-responder and doing more clinical research themselves in population with enough women either in the trial or female focused trials to make sure that what they're saying is right for women. Because you know, it wasn't really until 1993 that we were even included in, had to be included in clinical trials, which is extraordinary, right? We weren't even involved in seatbelts, which was interesting. So you know, we've, these things weren't that far away. And so I think looking for the companies that are doing actually active research on women, at least including them in their trials and in good proportion, I think is important because when you look at a marketing claim, a marketing claim can only exist or clinical claim or benefit claim, which is what they're called structure function claims for the most part. Like when you look on packaging and it says something, it's very important to think no and understand whether or not that thing was actually even tested on women. You know, so I think that's, I think that's like a second point. And then I think the third is that we are, I think, seeing an explosion. I think you're seeing like particularly in like menopause and like femtach. And I think now it just comes down to very similar to the gut. You're going to see like femtach and menopause mania. And there's a huge, everyone's going to say, oh, there's a market opportunity, like what I was saying before, you're saying million companies built because there's a great slide somewhere from a McKinsey report that says all these women with menopause have high disposable income. And then everyone's going to be a gold rash and to menopause. But that doesn't mean that everything, all these things are going to be just, you know, they're probably well intentioned. But not necessarily all good products. And so getting really, I think in some ways, it's not so much the industry. I think it's women getting smarter, asking better questions and reminding being really good advocates for their health, which means including with companies. I think sometimes we think about advocacy. We think about it really only with health care providers. But I think that we have to become really good advocates because the more bullshit that's tolerated and you let people sell women take their money for things that are not validated, that's like, you know, it's very similar to letting like healthcare system get away with not prioritizing our bodies. I have to complain for a second. Peace, yeah. Me and I talk about this quite often. It feels like as women, we have to know everything. Like there's always something like when I hear what you're saying, like I'm a single woman, I have time to go research these things. I know. I know. And it always frustrates me because I'm like, Oh, now I have to do this. I that's how I felt when I was diagnosed with PCOS, I was like, I don't, we're running our business. I'm like, I don't have time to change everything in my life. Let alone find the good information. And you're reminding me the positive of these, these creators curating information, you know, because I don't have time. And I don't know if I have the ADHD attention span to read the scientific information. But I see. I love the suggestion that you go read the scientific information. Oh, of course. With AI now, I think that we, we really do have the world at our fingertips in a way that we never did before. But I also, when women say to me, that makes me sound so, I'm like tired already. Like I don't want to go, like I don't even have kids and I'm tired. Like I, and then you imagine like a mom with three kids and you're just, and you're telling you're saying, Hey, you need to ask better questions. And they're like, I just want someone to do it for me. So I do think that I do think with AI, it's much faster. Yeah. And I've just been referring to like the microbiome itself. I just feel, just anything, anything. It's like tiring. It feels exhausting. I totally hear you. And now everything happening in our world, we have to be educated on. And it just feels like the information overload is so high, especially for women. It's, it's a lot. It just happens. That health is something that me and I deeply care about. So it's like, it is, but I, and I get this question a lot, which is, well, I don't know what you know. So how could I look it up and how would I even know if it's good for me? Like there's, there's absolutely, and there's like a, there's like an exhaustion to it, right? Just because I'm exhausted by the whole world, right? I'm already exhausted by the world, and then I have to go do this and I have to be an a, but I, I think that one of the things that came out of my mom being sick is that there is nothing more important than our bodies. You cannot live. You cannot love. You cannot be a parent. You cannot be a friend. You can't be a lover. You can't do your work. You can't move your body. You can't get from place A to B unless it works. And if you just think about the amount of time that that same woman probably spends researching a tinted moisturizer, like, like, like, the question comes down to, we don't really deeply understand what it means when our biology actually doesn't work. And as somebody who changed my mom's diaper at six, you know, diapers at 15, like, and watched a body truly go from, like, a real human to, like, literally, like, like, you, an unrecognizable physical form. I think that I come from a little bit of a different perspective, which is, let's look at how you're using your time, because I do think that there's what else is being used for. Obviously, of course, people have to work and they have gotten the stress and so, of course, but now with AI, with some of these tools at our fingertips, I do think that we have more time to be better advocates or more information, good information to at least be better advocates for our bodies and to make better choices. And I hear you, I feel exhausted when I say, I have two kids and I run a comp, like, I totally get it. And I always struggle with this when I say it, because people are a woman are like, I just want someone to tell me what to do. That's what literally everyone tells me. And I said, in what other world of feminism would that be okay, because let me tell you, there are people telling you what to do with your body right now. And this is what happened. This is what happens when you just want someone to tell you what to do. Guess what happens? They do it. And you know what it looks like? It looks like women who can't get abortion care in certain countries. I mean, and, and also, it's particularly in our, in certain states. So there is a mindset shift that is like, if you're born with a body, like you are also in that, in this country, there are other countries where the job, the government does a better job from a regulatory perspective, or you don't have to ask as many questions. And where the systems of healthcare are far different and better and don't create stress and don't put people into debt. And they're just a huge, a basic human universal right. We don't live in that, this country, in that country. That's not the country we live in. There's other beautiful things about our country, but it's not this one. We live in a country where there's no paid maternal leave. We are on a list of 10 other countries. The next largest one is Papua New Guinea. We are the only developed country on that list that doesn't have paid maternal leave. So it is the passivity and that women are willing to go march in Washington for certain things and then not be able to just spend a few extra, is a Googling or going on Chagy B.C. To understand something about something that could fundamentally change their life and increase their health span. That is something where I'm more questioned like how do we rewire and turn that into such an empowering advocacy, not a burden. Yeah. Well, I feel empowered here and you speak right now and I appreciate you reframing. You're like a late. No, I'm so grateful. I've voiced about my own frustration. And also, and I will also say asking a lot of questions gets you, it creates connectivity and community too. There's forums, Reddit, you ask a friend and they're like, oh my god, I have that also. And then they share. It can become a really beautiful, communing experience. Even there's certain men, there's certain men who have a great information for me. All the scientists I've worked with at C for the most part with these, I've been able to a couple of people are all men. Working towards really beautiful, this isn't just like a women's thing, but in terms of women's health. I think there's, you know, I think that we need to change the relationship to our bodies. And you're so right. AI has drastically changed our access to information. In my opinion, that's one of the beautiful things of it. Before this interview, I did an at-home mold test because I'm surrounded by like 10 plants, huge plants. concert I had mold. So it uses that home test. I couldn't read the booklet so I took a picture of it since it's a Shatchy BT and we diagnosed it, came up with a whole gay plan to like the type of air purifier. Took me 10 minutes. Yeah. 10 minutes. Yeah. Exactly. And that is a gift that I like save time by doing this. Yeah. You know, and that I'm so grateful for. Yeah. And it's allegicated. Yeah. Exactly. I think that's the big thing which is that under you start, it feels daunting at first and then you realize like how powerful you feel when you start to understand some of this stuff. And not only that, then we start to see that you see an Instagram ad and you're like, that's not true. It couldn't work that way. You know, or you're like you are, or you like take that copy and you put it into Shatchy BT and you're like, is that even right? Like, is that possible? And they're like, no, it doesn't even like, there's no way to do that. Or it makes you like a really empowered skeptic. And you know, not to say that you should like be skeptical of everything. And certainly there were great products that are being sold. But I do think it makes you so like walk through the world with a kind of agency and empowerment. And I'm always surprised when really amazing women are just like, I'm so tired. I just want someone to tell me what to do. And I'm like, in what other part of your life would you ever be okay with that? And the answer is none. And that's how we're treated. That's what you want to say at the end of your life. You want to be able to say, yeah, I just like, people just told me what to do with my body. Like, there's no arena, particularly from a legislative perspective where we're okay with that. So like, yeah, this is real empowerment. This is actionable empowerment. That has a very clear action step. And I think, you know, speaking about empowering women, but also it sounds like men as well. What shifts would you like to see in women's health and how it's studied, marketed, and discussed like in the next five to 10 years? I'd love to see, I'd really love to see early education for girls about their bodies and their whole life. Not just this is menstruating in here. It's had to put on a condom. I'd really love them to like start with like a language and like a basic understanding of what's happening in their bodies so that they can be lifelong advocates. I think there's like nothing more important because these are really hard things to change later. And so I love a young girl to know what does sex do to your body? Not just like how to have safe sex, but like sex impacts your biology. What does it do to your body? Like, so that when you're just making choices, you can make really good ones. And you can choose, you have choice, you know, and I think the education piece and that could be any range of amount of science, but I think just having some basic understanding of even what menstruation is and how it changes throughout your life and things that you do now, actually how they could impact your fertility, how they could impact, you know, your reproductive aspirations or non-aspirations and that's okay. I think there's a lot of really, even within religious places where there's more religious constraints, I think there's a really beautiful way to use science to empower young girls to understand their bodies biologically, that then give them the agency we were talking about. I think there's a way to also tie that to advocacy for women in general, not just for your own body, but in general, because of the current environment we're in, but also because that will probably shift many times during their lifetime. And so coming and not even trying to brand that as feminism, but just trying to brand that as a woman living with a body in the world and not tying it to anything politically, but just saying that your advocacy for your body and the sovereignty of your body is something that is really, and the biology of your body is sacred and important. So that would be like the first thing. I think the second is that I would really love to see AI and funding Mary to find some like really very probably attainable and very short term achievable solutions to some of the biggest unmet needs in women's health. We have the highest mortality rate of events in this country. We have things that are fully preventable, absolutely preventable. We have some of the highest rates of recurrent B.V. We're some of the highest rates, 22 billion dollars worth of care goes into just preterm birth alone. And so I think that's a really, a really, really big one for me, which is just the acceleration of some of the truly just totally sitting there, low hanging fruit solutions to things that could be much better. I'd like there to be legislation passed for paid maternal leave in this country. And I'd really like to see regulatory and policy change to fully articulate and understand that the impact of our environment on women's health and the things that women aren't choosing to do with the things that are happening to us without choice just by living in our world. And I think that, you know, I think that's the big one. And then I think the last one is care, which is like I really, I really think that women's health, there's a lot of cool startups, but I think that's going to obviously mostly impact women that can afford it first. But I hope that health care for women fundamentally changes. I mean, I hope health care for everybody changes really. But I think women are such a core part of society. And that ripples out to when they're cared for, there's so much data to support to show what that ripple effect could be for society. I want to live in that world that you just told me than that. I do want to live in that world. Absolutely. I was going to say one more, I mean, I don't think it's interesting to you, but look, you know, the last thing that my mom, which is kind of ties into the mad thing, the last thing that my mom ever gave me was this little pin that said she didn't always follow the recipe. And I just like, I always felt like, you know, and it's so interesting because me and my mom had a really bad relationship. And, you know, when a parent dies really young, you kind of always wonder if they knew you, you know, like just because like you're not like a fully formed, you know, you're just an asshole teenager. So, you know, you always wonder like did they know you? And when she gave me that, yeah, I just like it not only did I feel known, but it's really always kind of guided, you know, guided me in a lot of ways, which is beautiful. And I think it resonates with a lot of people who feel a lot of pressure to kind of follow the path, the way that they think it should be. Thank you so much for sharing that. That is so beautiful and it's so impactful. And I think also that's maybe a lot of advice that we all need to, but not just founders, but everyone needs to hear. Exactly. Me and I always, when we started our first business, let me tell you, we thought we could solve all the mental health problems in the United States. Big, big problem. We were trying to solve there. But one of our models was be the coat leader you wish to follow. All right, you are the coat leader I wish to follow. I love that. I love that. So on that note, so in this conversation, what makes you a mad woman? That is such a good question. I mean, I really think I'm, I think we're at what I'm driven from and where in like in me comes like the need to create that kind of and not just create things but create like impact. I think is what is like the driving force, you know, and the need to do that with like this kind of first principles of the questioning of the way it's of the way things have always been done is not something I've really ever accepted at face value ever. Probably to the demise of my parents for sure and having having been regaled still the stories of all the ways that I don't accept the way anything is ever done. And I think that that, you know, combined with the need to create and make impact, I think have have at least for me been the chemistry, you know, to be mad. And I think more than anything and I don't, I don't think it gets talked enough about and I don't think it gets talked enough about, you know, in business realms enough and I guess I don't consider this like a business conversation, but it is a little bit more work than anything else which I don't really see as a different from life, but I think that I have so strongly and so clearly always come from love. And I just think that that's like, that's it, that's all there is. And I think when you come from that place, it's, it's mad in the most beautiful way. Thank you. Thanks for getting mad with us. And thanks for listening to Mad Women. Subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Follow Mad Women on Instagram and TikTok at Mad Women_Studios. We'll be back next week until then. Subscribe, share and stay mad.