Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Tried and True with a dash of woo, where we blend rock-solid tips with a little bit of magic. I'm Renee Bowen, your host, life and business coach and professional photographer at your service. We are all about getting creative, diving into your business and playing with manifestation over here. So are you ready to get inspired and have some fun? Let's dive in. I hope you guys are having a phenomenal week. It is busy, busy, busy here. It's fall season, which I love, and it's my birthday month, which is also always fun.

Speaker 1: 0:37

I'm not one of those people who doesn't like birthdays. Yes, I am getting older, but you know what it's a gift to be alive. I am getting older, but you know what it's a gift to be alive, even in these crazy times. So I'm super grateful and super grateful for you and glad that I can bring you guys another awesome episode of the show. Today I'm speaking with Rachel Soper-Sanders, and she's a powerhouse. She's a CEO and the co-founder of Routine. It's a modern wellness brand offering science-backed supplements and at-home lab testing, and I love this conversation because I've always been sort of a holistic girly and, yes, you know, I'm a big believer in doing what is right for you when it comes to your health, but I lean more toward the biohacking and more toward the holistic side of things, for sure, and always have. I was even a massage therapist for a few years there before I found my way to photography, way back when, and I'm a big believer that we should be listening to our bodies, and so I love routine.

Speaker 1: 1:40

I think that the science behind it, especially, is super interesting, so we're going to chat a little bit about that and her journey and basically how she sort of came to that right. She's also a digital creator, a podcast host, an investor, and she's really, really active on social media, especially on Instagram, so all the links for her are below. You're going to love this conversation, though. She helps us sort of frame some practical tips for improving your stress, your weight, sleep and productivity, and she's really passionate about serving millennial and Gen X women with our health concerns, which is pretty awesome. Her work has been featured in publications like Forbes and Entrepreneur, and she holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, so, yeah, she's pretty cool. She's also a mom of two and, like I said, a wellness company founder, so let's just jump right into this conversation. I know you guys are going to really get a lot out of this. Hey Rachel, thanks for joining me today. I'm really excited about this chat.

Speaker 2: 2:41

Thanks for having me Excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 2:43

I just want to kind of jump right into this topic. You are such an expert when it comes to practical health tips, so I really want to focus on some practical health tips to increase productivity and creativity, because most of my audience, as you know, are female, mostly female entrepreneurs who are creatives in some way. I mean, I believe everybody's a creative at the heart of it, right. But I wanna just kind of jump into some of the common pitfalls actually that you see in your communities of female entrepreneurs, some health pitfalls that they fall into, that we fall into, and how we can avoid them hopefully.

Speaker 2: 3:21

Yeah, one of the biggest things for productivity is really looking at your overall health and specifically for women, especially in this demo. They're entrepreneurs, they're creatives, they're probably perfectionists. They often have a real issue with high stress and cortisol imbalance. And when you think about cortisol, for anyone who doesn't know what it is, it's your stress hormone and for the most part it's good, but it's really bad to have it elevated all the time, and elevated cortisol cortisol imbalance really plays a role in our minds. It plays a role in how productive we can be. It plays a role in that brain fog and that ability to get stuff done.

Speaker 2: 4:02

If you're dealing with extra stress, trouble sleeping, you're dealing with brain fog and that ability to get stuff done. If you're dealing with extra stress, trouble sleeping, you're dealing with brain fog, you're procrastinating in the afternoon these can all be signs and symptoms of cortisol imbalance and so, if you're looking to be more creative, get stuff done, really paying attention to your cortisol is my number one tip, and there's all sorts of ways that you can do that. I'm happy to get into it. But thinking about your health a little bit more holistically, because your mind is so connected to your body and your ability to be productive and solve problems is so connected to your individual health.

Speaker 1: 4:37

No, I personally know that one for sure. I feel like my cortisol was just so out of whack for so many years. You know I had twins in 2000,. So they're almost 24, but it took me forever to like it kind of threw. I really feel like that was like a catalyst for throwing my body out of whack. I had one baby and I bounced right back and then I had these twins two years later and my body was just like absolutely not. We're not, we're not doing anything that you want us to do anymore Like cortisol hormones. Like I was diagnosed with Hashimoto's, like all my body just went haywire, basically Right. And so I know that you dealt with some stuff after your postpartum as well. Talk to us a little bit about what that was like for you and kind of. I think that's what sparked your, your health journey, if I'm not mistaken.

Speaker 2: 5:31

Yeah, exactly so. Postpartum is so hard. Especially I find that there's so many women with similar stories to you, and myself included, where you have your first baby and all's good, like you bounce back, you lose the weight, you get back to work, things are looking good, and then you have the second, and then other people have third, fourth, et cetera. But after my second I was struggling. I was not feeling my best. I'm over here building a business and really wanting to get back to work and wanting to be my most productive self. I'm not sleeping well, obviously, with a newborn, but even kind of three, four months in when my newborn started sleeping, I still wasn't. I was waking up at 2, 3 am in the morning, having trouble getting back to sleep, and everyone knows that feeling right, where you don't have the best night's sleep, and then you're stressed about it, and then the next day you really can't get what you want to get done, done, and then the next day you really can't get what you want to get done, done, and then it creates this vicious cycle and then, beyond that, I also, like a lot of moms, wanted to lose my postpartum weight and I was doing all the things. I was working out. I was doing the 8K steps a day, I was eating well and the weight was coming off a little bit, but then I plateaued and I just could not figure out why.

Speaker 2: 6:41

And around the same time Routine, the company that I founded we were in the process of launching our own cortisol test, and I took the test early on and figured out that my cortisol was completely imbalanced. And what's supposed to happen is your cortisol is supposed to spike in the morning. It helps you wake up and then it comes down throughout the day, being the lowest at night to help you fall asleep and allow that melatonin production. But what mine was doing is it was too low in the morning so I was waking up and I was really groggy and I needed a lot of caffeine and I had trouble getting my day started and I really didn't want to do much until kind of 9, 10 am type of thing, and then it was actually too high at night and so I was having trouble falling asleep even though I was really tired.

Speaker 2: 7:23

So that tired but wired feeling and some of the dealing with other symptoms, like a lot of extra cravings for not so healthy food I was having that brain fog, the really annoying afternoon slump where it was really hard to be productive during that like small amount of time that I had to be productive as a working mom with two kids, and so once I really started focusing on my cortisol, I changed most things about how I was thinking about health and how I was thinking about my workday in general, changed my lifestyle, my nutrition, my workouts, when and how I would work for the company at night, and with all of that I was really able to transform how I was feeling from a stress perspective, from a cortisol perspective, but then also transform my body, ended up losing 52 pounds in 10 months, and so it was a really transformative experience for me overall.

Speaker 2: 8:11

Am I perfect when it comes to cortisol right now? Am I sitting here completely stress-free? No, of course not. I have a startup, I'm building a business, I have two little kids and there's stress in my life, but I have a lot better tools to handle it and a lot better knowledge around what I should and shouldn't be doing to really help incorporate them on a daily basis.

Speaker 1: 8:32

That's really amazing that you were able to, you know, get to the bottom of that, figure that out and get it to work. I feel like it took me so long, like years, like years and years and years and early menopause and all of that kind of stuff Like I hit actual menopause in my early forties so, like my, my body, I feel like, just was in a very heightened state of cortisol for way too long. So what are the things? I know that you know your company routine, like that's one of the things that you guys do. You do the testing, like you had mentioned. So, once you did that testing, what were some of the things that you incorporated as far as, like, the supplements or things that you've done and what you guys offer that help and that you've seen help other women in a similar situation?

Speaker 2: 9:18

Yeah, so one of the magic things that we offer and I say magic because they really have helped me across the board are our functional drink mixes, and they're all combinations of adaptogens that really work incredibly well together. They have the synergistic effect to give you the effect that you're looking for in a really short period of time. So most people are feeling benefits across sleep, stress or focus, depending on which one you're taking within about 20 minutes, and so, from a product perspective, they're all clinician formulated, built to be clean ingredients and meant to work fast in powder sachets that you can take on the go. So they also fit within that busy lifestyle that so many of us are leading and really give the benefits that people are wanting and the problems that they're dealing with, and so those have been extremely helpful. I take all of them almost every day for a different time during the day, and it's been a complete game changer there and really supporting the overall everything else that I'm doing on the nutrition side.

Speaker 2: 10:16

A couple of the key changes that I've made that are I always recommend others are eating more protein. So trying to hit uh, the research recommends about one gram per your body weight I've also heard per your ideal body weight. If you're looking to um drop weight and so I'm hitting over a hundred hopefully like more than that per day um, starting with 30 to 40 grams at breakfast. And that's another thing that I changed is I used to intermittent fast. That was one of the things that I was doing postpartum to just overall improve my health and try to lose weight. But what I learned is that intermittent fasting and just fasting in general can add excess stress to your body. It's a physical stressor, and so if we're someone who was dealing with cortisol imbalance in the way that I was, it was suggested to me to try to start eating breakfast again, and that really made a big difference. And so for anyone out there who is, especially women who are fasting that have cortisol issues, consider if that is the right thing for your body. It wasn't the right thing for mine. There are still some reasons to do it versus not. But those are the two kind of nutrition things.

Speaker 2: 11:30

And then, on top of that, eating whole foods, the lean proteins, the vegetables, the fruits of the world and avoiding the processed foods and the sugar is really important, because what happens is when you eat a bunch of processed foods or sugary foods. It spikes your blood sugar and then insulin comes in to try to lower it. More insulin increases your cortisol levels and you enter into this really vicious cycle. So the more whole, healthy foods that you can eat, uh, the better it's going to be from a physical stressor perspective on your body and then from a workout, because a lot of people ask this um, yes, high intensity cardio can spike your cortisol.

Speaker 2: 12:12

Is it okay? For some people? Yes, Does it have benefits across other, like mental health, et cetera? Yes, but I was doing it like three to four to five days a week and that was not the best for my cortisol levels. It was also not best for my body comp changes and the weight loss that I wanted to hit, and so I moved that to one to two days a week. I'm doing much more strength training and then I'm walking a lot. So those are the kind of core buckets. There's other a bunch of lifestyle changes too. Whether it's putting my phone down 30 minutes before bed, I'm even trying an hour now, which is a big stretch. Don't look at your phone for an hour, Not looking at it right when you wake up. It often will spike your cortisol. Maybe you're seeing the news. Maybe you're seeing something on social you don't want to see. Those are a couple easy habits that you can adopt fairly fast.

Speaker 1: 13:01

Those are all really great pieces of advice. I try and do all those too. There's definitely some major changes that I implemented within the last two or three years, I would say, and I feel like they've made a huge difference, especially not looking at my phone, not consuming, right off the bat. I have a very and I've spoken about this a lot on the podcast. I mean, I've always had a very high level of anxiety. I'm just an anxiety girly. I'm a Virgo. I think it goes along with it, like it's just one of those things.

Speaker 1: 13:31

My whole life I've dealt with a decent amount of anxiety, and I know that. You know, looking at the phone, no matter what it is, it doesn't have to be anything, even scary, it's just like it it hits you kind of like in your face. It's like a slap in the face, like right as you wake up, and I really don't want to start my day like that. So I've noticed a really big difference with that. I do need to get better about doing that at night, though, because, like, I will put my phone away at night, but then I'll look at it again before I go to sleep. That's my thing.

Speaker 1: 14:03

It's like oh, I'll just check and make sure my alarms are set you know, and then I get sucked into whatever else and so I need to be a lot more disciplined with myself. I know about that. I try and do journaling at night too. Like, for some reason I prefer to journal at night than in the morning, and I've also talked about that here on the podcast. For some, you know, mindset tips for people is that if you have a hard time doing that in the morning, like some people are more prone to that. They prefer to journal in the morning. They like to have like a slower sort of start to their day.

Speaker 1: 14:35

I'm one of those people that I want to get up and get at it. Like I get up, get in the shower or go for a walk or vice versa, like whatever I have going on that day, and then I just like to kind of dive into my work. I don't know, there's just something about it that I feel really productive and energetic in the morning. So I want to like get most of my busy work my podcast, whatever I've got going on that day before like one or two o'clock, and I find that that works really well because then I can do some other stuff after that, but not necessarily like high focus work if that makes sense and intuitively, just knowing that about myself and like leaning into like what my body actually feels good to do. And another thing is walking in the afternoon, like I'd always been one of those people who just walked, you know, and I love to walk. I like it's meditative for me. I wish I could run, but my knees are not having it anymore, but so I love to walk and I feel like, you know, it used to be one of those things where I would just do it in the morning, but I found in the last like couple years that I feel better in general and mentally if I do like a late afternoon walk, like right after dinner, is actually perfect because it's actually good for you. I think as well to walk after you eat, because it helps the glucose and all of those things. So that actually has been working really well for me.

Speaker 1: 15:57

And I think that it's just really important for people to kind of experiment, probably, and find out like what feels good to you as well. Right, and don't try and fit yourself into, uh, you know, the square peg and the the round hole sort of thing, cause, like you said, that intermittent fasting we've been hearing for a while. That that's the thing. That's the thing. But that didn't work for me either, like that made me feel awful. So it's really important to listen to that. But I want to kind of dig in really fast to the science behind, because you know, I love this whole idea of the aptogens, like what you were speaking about with the supplements and the drinks. Let's talk a little bit about the science behind those, because I don't know if a lot of people know what the aptogens are and kind of what they are, and I know that there's, like you said, sleep, focus and remind me again, stress, stress, yes. So talk to me a little bit about what is in that, in each of one of those, and why they tend to work for us.

Speaker 2: 17:05

Yeah. So let's start with stress, because that's what we've been talking about a lot here. So our stress mix is four adaptogens, and the ones that you're most likely going to have heard of before are ashwagandha and rhodiola. We also have ginseng and astragalus in our stress blend and, specifically, adaptogens are mostly herbals. There's some, there are adaptogenic mushrooms. We do not use adaptogenic mushrooms, but they're really. They have a lot of different properties, the ones that we have in our stress. So ashwagandha, rhodiola are proven to help your body handle stress better. So boosting stress resiliency, helping bring your body back to balance faster and so supporting all these other lifestyle nutrition habits that we're doing. And our blend specifically, we created to make you feel that calm, that relaxation, and so you're actually going to feel something. Maybe you're a low or no that relaxation, and so you're actually going to feel something. Maybe you're a low or no alcohol girly. Maybe you're trying to cut down on your alcohol use, because we've all heard all the things about how bad it is for our health and our productivity. I actually will take this every single night instead of grabbing that glass of wine. So I put my kids to bed. I have a four and a half year old and a one and a half year old by the time they're in bed. I'm like my day is over, like I need something, and this is that something.

Speaker 2: 18:23

The sleep is similar. It's five adaptogens in there. A couple of the key ones are magnesium, l-theanine and phosphatidylserine, and together with all of the ingredients, they really have this effect of relaxing your body and your mind. So you're putting a brake pedal to your mind. You're also relaxing your body and you're relaxing your muscles with that magnesium and just helping your body fall into sleep. So you're going to fall asleep faster and then you're going to stay asleep and wake up rested.

Speaker 2: 18:51

So for a lot of women, they're waking up at 2, 3 am and not being able to fall back asleep, and that's both a these products are really meant to help that. They are melatonin. So sleep is melatonin free, which allows it to be a lot better for daily use, and there's a lot of research coming out that maybe melatonin daily use isn't the best for us. It is good for certain health conditions, certain scenarios, but for me personally, melatonin makes me insane. I have the weirdest dreams. I wake up feeling super drugged. Same thing with a lot of the sleep aids where, if you're taking like a NyQuil or a Z-Quil is what they call it now, you might fall asleep and I fall asleep fast, but I wake up and I'm very groggy the next day and it's really hard to get stuff done. And when you're a mom and you're working and you're building business, it's very hard to give up a day.

Speaker 1: 19:49

Chances are, if you're a high school senior photographer, you have tried your hand at the senior rep program or running an ambassador team or an influencer team or whatever you want to call it. Back in the day, we used to call it a model team, and while it is 100% true that this is actually the best way to build a senior business and get a foothold in your market, unfortunately I see a lot of senior photographers running their teams in a very inefficient and not profitable kind of way, and if you don't have a really good, solid program, it's really easy for this to consume all of your life. Take up all your time and soon you're just exhausted. A good senior rep program is going to keep you booked year round effortlessly, as well as make you money. Some of the students inside of the creative team method are making $45,000 in the month of January alone just from signing up their team, which is amazing because January and February are typically pretty slower month for senior photographers.

Speaker 1: 20:40

Inside of the creative team method, I teach you every single thing you need to know about how to build a revamp your team so that it attracts Gen Z and soon to be Gen Alpha clients year round effortlessly, because teens today want something more and different from a senior rep program, and if you're not offering that, you're going to be looked over. Let's face it there's a lot of senior photographers now and you need to be standing out, and the creative team method is a fantastic way to do that, because I don't do things like other senior photographers and I don't want you to either. Right now you can grab this program for $700 off, but not for long, so you need to head to reneebowencom slash senior rep team and grab it while you can. On that page, you're going to see a lot of testimonials from a lot of photographers who have used this program and are absolutely killing it, and you can be too. The link is also in the show notes, so head over and I will see you inside.

Speaker 2: 21:35

And that brings us to focus. So focus is our, it's both. It helps with cognition, mental clarity and energy. So a couple of the key ingredients here are CDB, choline, which really helps with cognitive function, and fun fact 90% of women are deficient in choline, and so adding more choline really helps bring the blood flow to the brain, as I call it, kind of nature's Adderall. There is also ginseng, bacopa and a little bit of caffeine, so it's about 25 milligrams, about the same as a cup of green tea. So you're getting that alertness and it's really helping you get all your stuff done, whether you're at home on the weekends trying to like clean your house or like do all the tasks that you never have enough time for, or you're trying to get through the afternoon slump, or I'm similar to you. I love to do a lot of my deep work in the morning, and I'll take this in the morning and just like sit down and like crank out stuff, which is really fun.

Speaker 1: 22:29

Definitely going to have to be trying some of these because and also my husband like I know we've been talking about like women and our issues and stuff, but my husband is one of those people. Sleep is just his. That is his crux, his whole life. You know he definitely has ADHD, so that there there's that he's neurodiverse and his brain never really stops. And a lot of my audience I find like especially the female entrepreneurs that I work with have that issue where you know the brain just like it might stop and then it just starts back up in the middle, like in the middle of the night or whatever.

Speaker 1: 23:04

I personally like that's the one issue thank God that I never have, even through menopause and the night sweats and all that stuff, like I could just fall right back to sleep, like I fall asleep quickly and I stay asleep. Sleep is, I call it, my superpower. I feel like that might be the one reason why I'm able to like still have my sanity is because I can actually still sleep. But I know so many people who struggle with this and my husband's one of them. When I tell you he has tried everything, I mean like pretty much everything.

Speaker 1: 23:35

So there've been some nights where he's like okay, here's the list of things that I took, in case you need to call the emergency room and I'm like uh, if I took even like a, like a small portion of what you're taking, I would be in the hospital because he just he's like putting down an elephant, I swear to God, and it's like so scary. So also I wanted to ask you is there a difference? Because I know there there's like gummies and then there's supplements and then yours are like drinks, so what?

Speaker 2: 24:02

is that.

Speaker 1: 24:03

Yeah, they're powders, and so is it because they absorb faster, like what's sort of like the logic behind that, yeah, the why.

Speaker 2: 24:11

There's a lot of whys behind the powders. One, it definitely helps with absorption. Two, we are able to put more active ingredients in the powders per dose than you really can in a pill or a gummy, and what we really cared about is helping our customers get that effect that they need and solving that problem, and so we really wanted to make sure that we were putting therapeutic dosages in a way that also had that synergistic effect into a drink mix and it allows her a really fun routine. So you get to have this like fun drink. It's kind of like a experience versus just taking a pill or a gummy, which people are getting really sick of and they're really easy to take on the go.

Speaker 2: 24:53

so they're in little packets, which allows for you to put them in your purse, throw them, take them to work, travel with them, and all of us here most likely your audience are living this crazy on the go lifestyle and so having something that you can take, put in a water bottle, shake it up and have versus a tub or like you're not going to take a container of gummies everywhere with you, it really allows for that flexibility that a lot of other options don't.

Speaker 1: 25:19

Yeah, that does make a lot of sense and I know that. You know like for me, especially like that, the on the go thing is kind of a big factor for sure, because you know I do travel a ton, but a decent amount, and you know I want to be able to like easily pack stuff. I wanted to ask you real quick too. You mentioned a little bit about testing at home, lab testing. Is that specifically about cortisol, but what are some of the other? Because I know routine offers that and I don't know if a lot of people sort of get kind of why you would want to do that. Like, what are you testing for specifically? Are there different ones? And is it something that you recommend, like people do often? Is it just like a one-time thing? Is it once a year? Like, what do you see most people using that for?

Speaker 2: 26:08

Yeah, at-home lab testing is a really great way to understand what your baseline is and where your body is, regardless of what you're testing. So with the cortisol test, the best way to understand if your cortisol is imbalanced and the only way to really know is to test it, and there's a lot of different types of cortisol tests out there. The one type that I like, which is what we offer, is one that looks at your cortisol throughout the day, and the reason that's important is because, as we talked about earlier, your cortisol is supposed to follow a rhythm and if it is off at any point in that rhythm you're going to have slightly different symptoms. You might be imbalanced, but if you only test at one point in the day so a lot of people talk about getting their blood work done to test their cortisol levels that is only testing your cortisol level at one point, and so you're really not seeing the rest of the picture, and you could be missing something pretty critical there. But in terms of what you get like, what are the results look like?

Speaker 2: 27:02

So we've looked at over 144,000 data points in literature to craft what an optimal cortisol curve range looks like, and so we take your results, we plot it against that optimal curve and then, based on your results, give you recommendations across nutrition, supplementation, lifestyle, sleep habits, et cetera that can really help you, whether it's increase your cortisol or decrease your cortisol or change it during different times. It's all built in there. And then we do have addition to some other lab tests as well. We look at vitamin and mineral levels and we also have a genetics specifically for nutrition test and those are really targeted more around where your levels are from a vitamin and mineral perspective and if there's things that maybe you need to be taking or that you're you have deficiencies or you're over optimal in some of your categories.

Speaker 1: 27:49

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. And so is this stuff that you can do at home and you send off Yep, exactly, get it back, exactly. Yeah, I love that and I'm, you know, I know that there's a lot out there, you know. So you know it can kind of be hard sometimes to kind of decipher all of that and rifle through everything. But you guys have been around for a while, like, talk to me a little bit about routine and what brought you to this company, like why, why did you feel like okay, now, this is where I kind of want to go, because we've worn other hats, you know what I mean, and so I wanted to just kind of figure out a little bit about. I know that we talked about your postpartum and that sort of led you to it. But where do you see routine as far as, like you know, fitting in like the next few years, like where you guys are going what you hope for this to look like.

Speaker 1: 28:39

I'm always interested to also hear the other side of that entrepreneurial journey too.

Speaker 2: 28:50

Yeah, happy to share a little bit more. So in terms of kind of the why behind a lot of this, I grew up in a household where holistic health was really part of my everyday life. It was ingrained in me from an early age and so when I was struggling with my health in my early twenties, early in my career mostly due to excess stress and lack of sleep because I was working in finance with a lot of added stressors and working more than I should I went back to the supplement aisle and saw very little innovation and I saw this massive gap around more science-backed, effective products that were actually accessible in the market. And we launched Routine, really with this idea to build smarter health solutions for your most vibrant health, starting with supplements and lab testing. And, yeah, so we launched originally with our smart multivitam, which is custom dose to your individual biology and what we learned through that experience, both personally I became a mom and then a mom of two and went through this postpartum journey and then also through our customers, both what their tests were saying, what their feedback was saying, what they were telling us around where their needs were, and we really discovered this like mental wellness crisis for women in their thirties, forties and fifties, where millennial and Gen X women are being underserved and at the same time, in the last few years, they're more stressed, they're more overwhelmed, they're more burnt out and they're sleeping worse than they've ever slept before.

Speaker 2: 30:03

Women are fatigued at a rate of 4x to men and despite the fact that mood and mind health supplements are a massive business they do $24 billion market no one is serving millennial and genic women, and I'm am.

Speaker 2: 30:17

I'm a millennial mom who is suffering from a lot of these or was suffering from a lot of these issues, and we were hearing from our customers the same thing, and so that's really how the drink mixes came about is we wanted to help them even further level up their supplement routines and get products that were efficient, that were effective, that were really science backed but were also accessible from a messaging, from a price point, from a location standpoint and then where we're going to your point. So we launched these products this year, which we're really excited about, and we're continuing to scale them. So we recently launched on Amazon. We're scaling that, we've scaled that quite quickly. We're now on TikTok shop and working on that, and then we're entering into retail as well. So we're in some independence now and then having a lot of great retail conversations to scale more national over the next few years.

Speaker 1: 31:09

Sweet yeah, oh, that's so exciting. That's real. I love hearing like that side of it as well. You know, and yeah, I've been in the holistic. I didn't grow I would not gonna say I grew up with it, because I am Gen X and I'm from the deep South and you know it's not something that was ingrained in me as a kid, it's not something that was in my house, right, but definitely in my early twenties. You know, I moved to LA in my early twenties and went to massage therapy school, like went to a very hippie, dippy massage therapy school. That's kind of how I got not introduced, because I kind of had been introduced before, but really ingrained in sort of the holistic healthcare and wellbeing. So yeah, ever since then I've kind of been on that journey.

Speaker 1: 31:52

I was diagnosed with endometriosis when I was, I think, 16.

Speaker 1: 31:57

And it was in my early twenties that I decided I'm going to figure this out holistically, I'm going to stop doing all of this other stuff that was not really making me feel great. I mean, you know, thankfully my doctors at the time were at least preserving my fertility by, you know, going in and doing some laparoscopy surgeries and things like that. But being on the pill and being on hormones and all that stuff was not a great fit for me. So I went the other route and did my research. I went to, you know, chinese medicine and acupuncture and a lot of different modalities that really helped. And then, you know, I ended up being I had three of those surgeries by the time I was like 21. And I, my doctor at the time, he, he told me he said you know, we're doing this to preserve your fertility but you may not, you know, be able to have kids, like we don't know. Uh, because my endometriosis was so bad and then I was incredibly fertile, like you know, like who knew I would be.

Speaker 1: 33:00

I would have three kids under the age of two and twins. You know it was like one of those like whoa Okay. So I'm really thankful for that. But I really do think like focusing on the holistic part of it was a really, really, really big part of that. And do you find, too, it is a health thing and, yes, it's nutrition, and we've talked a little bit about the exercising, the supplementation, the diet, but the mental game as well right, that connection with having a calm nervous system really kind of working from the inside out. Is that something you also try and implement into your daily routine and something that? What advice, basically, would you give those millennial and Gen X female entrepreneurs like us who are super busy running businesses, moms who are struggling to find time for self-care?

Speaker 2: 33:57

This is not my best in terms of where I am today, but I'm going to share what I have learned so far and that's what's been working recently. So I I don't journal, but I do have a gratitude practice that I started, where the first thing I do when I wake up I think of three things that I'm grateful for that day and that has completely transformed my overall mindset is now I see myself on a walk in the afternoon where like, oh, it's so nice that it's so beautiful out, I'm so lucky that I can take a walk in the middle of the day, and that's really helpful. And then some other mindset things. I don't really know if this falls into mindset, but setting boundaries around your own calendar and your own time and giving yourself the permission to do it has made a really big difference for me. So one of the things that I have shifted and this is more of a productivity and working is maybe three mornings out of the week there's a couple of mornings I can't do this where I actually don't look at my email or my Slack. I'll look at my phone, but I don't look at my email or my Slack until I get like one to two to three things that I know that I really need to get done done that day. And that helps me with my overwhelm, it helps me with feeling burned out, it helps me from just getting on that roller coaster of constantly answering other people. Because I am a CEO, I do have a team, I have other people that are relying on me for things, that need things. And the more you have to give, give, give all day that creates a mental stressor, at least for me. Give all day that creates like a mental stressor, at least for me. And so carving out that time and saying actually like I'm going to be a better CEO, this company is going to be better if I do this, that's been really helpful.

Speaker 2: 35:32

And then the other boundary piece of that is to your point about figuring out when you work best. A lot of us have been given the gift of working from home. We're a little bit more flexible with office work, but even if you're in an office, this works too. Figure out when your flow state is. A lot of times it follows your circadian rhythm, it follows your cortisol levels, but some people your flow state is in the afternoon. Some people it's at night. Some people it's in the morning.

Speaker 2: 36:05

For me, like you, it sounds like it's in the morning, so I do my deepest work during that time and then do my calls, try to do all the things and then by like three, 30, my brain just kind of shuts up and that's when I work out. So I walk and I work out. I do about a 30 minute, 30 to 40 minute strength training most days and that just completely shifts everything. It clears out my brain, it gives me kind of a mental boost, it gives me more energy, I sit back down and I'm way more productive, way more creative.

Speaker 2: 36:32

And I used to feel bad about that. It's like it's 3.30 in the afternoon. I should be working right now. But you know what? It doesn't serve anyone if I just push through, because I just sit there like maybe I end up scrolling my phone, I'll like scroll through my email. It's just like I'm not productive at all. So why don't I use that time, go work out, reset myself and come back? But it was giving myself that permission and allowing myself to have that mindset that made me figure it out. And then I became a better team member, a better CEO, a better mom, just because I was able to do all of that.

Speaker 1: 37:04

That's really great advice and I feel like we just try and push ourselves so much and, you know, like I said, maybe hold ourselves to other people's standards and all of these things. You know, we kind of get lost in like the oh, I should be, I should be, I should be. And it's really important to just really tune in and stop, you know the noise, and listen to, like what your body's trying to tell you, what really actually feels good to you. And that has just been the biggest, you know, shift for me is when I'm more intentional about noticing those things and just stopping and going wait, wait, wait. That that doesn't, that doesn't feel right, like is this a yes or a no? And really listening and and trusting and following that intuitively has been really big for me because I am more productive, I am more creative and I'm more calm, my nervous system is relaxed and more things come to me Like I can receive. You know what the universe wants from me. It's really kind of impactful and it does feel very different than what we've been taught, especially those of us who are very type A and do, do, do, do, do and want to do all the things. It can be hard, but once you sort of like start doing that, it kind of really does make a big difference. Huh, yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1: 38:20

Well, this has been such a great conversation. I am really excited to try these drinks because, like I said, I feel like especially the stress, especially the stress, especially this last few months have just been a lot. So I'm always looking for ways to support that for myself and also for a lot of the people in my coaching community. Like I said, a lot of us are dealing with the same sort of you know issues, so this has been really great. Thank you so much for being here and I'm going to put all the links below for people to find you. But where do people like if you want to? They want to connect with you. What's the best place for them?

Speaker 2: 38:59

Yeah, this has been such a great conversation. Thanks for having me. So, in terms of where you can find me, my main channel is on Instagram it's Rachel Soap S-O-P Sanders, and then through that you can figure out how to sign up for my newsletter or go to my website, learn all the things and then Routine. You can find us on socials at routine underscore co. At our website at routine, which is spelled R-O-O-T-I-N-E dot C-O, and then you can also find our products on Amazon and TikTok shop.

Speaker 1: 39:26

Yeah, awesome, yeah, and I'm going to talk to you a little bit about TikTok shop too, when we, after we, sign off, because I have been doing a lot of affiliate work there and so I didn't know that you guys were on TikTok shop and I'm really excited to you know, like I said, try it and also share about it on TikTok, because I feel like that whole wellness community there is just really like on top of it, so that's probably going to do really well for you guys. That's really exciting. Well, thank you so much. It was awesome chatting and have a great rest of your day, thank you. So that was a really awesome episode, right, and I know that you guys are walking away with some really great reminders, probably some things that you maybe already know you might want to try and do to optimize your health and your wellness, but maybe has been a little too far down on your to-do list. So I hope that this conversation with Rachel prompted you to remember how important all of those pieces of the puzzle are and for those of us especially who struggle with stress and want to find natural, effective ways to deal with it that don't feel, you know, like you're checking out of life. Sometimes it's nice to check out of life, but on the daily, it's much better to see how we can integrate that a little bit better, and I hope that some of these tips really, you know shine to light on those pieces, those parts of your life that you might have been neglecting lately. So I'm really excited, though, to hear your feedback about this episode. Again, all the links that you need are below. If you guys want to check out routine and go ahead and follow Rachel over on Instagram, share about the episode on Instagram, make sure you tag us so that we can reshare that and, yeah, I'm really excited to hear what you guys think about it.

Speaker 1: 41:26

I'm always looking for ways to manage my stress more effectively, and getting better sleep is always good. Even for those of us who sleep well, I feel like there are still some nights where I you know, especially when you have to get up to pee five times like hello, thank you, menopause. You know, it's always a little bit nice to be able to fall right back into that deep sleep, and, as a creative entrepreneur, you want to make sure you are optimizing that creativity and you're able to access it, and the best way to do that is to make sure that you are optimizing your mental well-being, your physical well-being. I know that it can feel like a chore, I know it can feel like just like one more thing that you have to do, but these are the things that actually give you so much more empowerment and energy to do all the other things that you have on that list. So don't forget to take care of you. Have a wonderful rest of your day and your week and I'll see you guys next time. Love you, bye.