Inside Cymbiotika: How Durana Elmi Built a Wellness Empire

Durana Elmi knows how to build a business. Before Cymbiotika, she built and exited four companies. She then took a wellness brand with one employee, one product, and almost no infrastructure and helped scale it into a $150 million business alongside her husband Shahab. In this episode of Aspire, Emma sits down with Durana to unpack the decisions behind that growth. They also get candid about money, marriage, and leadership. Durana shares why financial independence matters deeply to her, what 27 years of building alongside her husband has taught her about disagreement, and how her definition of success has changed from making money to owning her time. You’ll learn: Why Cymbiotika bootstrapped for five years before taking outside capitalWhat infrastructure needs to be in place when a business starts growing faster than you can keep up withThe expensive lessons founders can learn from going into retail too quicklyWhat a $25 million strategic raise brought beyond capitalWhy celebrity investors became a part of Cymbiotika’s growth strategyHow to make decisions when data challenges your instincts

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:09Emma Grede?

  Durana Elmi is the woman behind Cymbiotika, one of the fastest growing wellness brands in the country. She helped take the business from its earliest stages to $150 million in revenue. And what makes her story especially interesting to me is that this wasn't her first time building. Before Cymbiotika, Durana had already built and exited four companies. So this conversation is really about what repeated experience teaches you. What actually matters when you're scaling? What you learn to stop doing, where to invest, when to move quickly, and when success itself can become a distraction. Listen for Durana's three rules for succeeding in retail, why she believes bootstrapping gave Cymbiotika the discipline it needed,

• 0:50Emma Grede?

  and the expensive lesson she learned from expanding simply because the company could. We also get into money, working with your husband, managing your emotions as a leader, and what financial independence has meant to both of us. Toward the end, Durana shares something deeply personal about the cost of becoming more visible as a founder and what one terrifying experience taught her about success, family, and what actually matters. Here's my conversation with Durana Elmi.

• 1:24Emma Grede?

  Durana, welcome to Aspire.

• 1:25Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. It's an honour to be here.

• 1:27Emma Grede?

  I am so happy to have you because I have been an avid user of your products at Cymbiotika for the longest time. And so when you're that invested in a brand, you start doing the digging, well, I do anyway. And I learned so much about this incredible business of yours. But I want to ground our audience just in a few things before we start. Now, Cymbiotika is growing at a rate that most businesses never, ever will. You've sold over 200 million packets. You're growing 400% in the last, what, three years? And you've been profitable every single year since 2019. And not only that, but you are a serial entrepreneur with four exits behind you.

• 2:10Emma Grede?

  So I have a feeling that me and my audience have an enormous amount to learn from you. I really want to understand today what it's taken, what the systems and the culture is that you've put in place to grow this business to this point. Because I'm pretty sure that we're about to see your fifth exit. So obviously, given all of that, you had both the experience and the financial freedom to do exactly whatever it is that you would want to do from the get-go. So why was it that you chose the wellness space?

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, great question. I lost my father. And I think that was the why for me personally. I was so incredibly passionate to be a part of this journey. My husband lost his grandfather, who was his mentor and his rock and who's, you know, confidant. And our partner lost his father. So all of us had such a personal, such a deep why as to the beginning, the roots of why Cymbiotika. Having means, exiting businesses, having capital. I still couldn't save my father. And my partner couldn't save his father. And my husband couldn't save his grandfather.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  And when we reflect back on their journey, their health journey, there were so many opportunities that they could have been preventative with their health, where it would have elongated them being here. And so we became obsessed with how do we change the way people look at health? How do we change how health is accessible? So that was really like where the obsession started. And for me, having such a tough childhood, growing up with nothing. When I met you, I was so excited. I wanted to lift you up, but I didn't want to ruin your outfit. But we have, like, woman to woman, like, I really relate to you. We've had so much hardship in our lives as children.

• 4:03Speaker 01

  And so the only way for me to be where I'm at today is the core of how I had to do everything was like being good to myself. Because nothing else in my life, like, was good to me.

• 4:15Emma Grede?

  I really understand that.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Life was tough. And so going through that level and going through the depth of that adversity, you've got to self-love, you've got to self-heal. And there's no victim mentality. So Cymbiotika is really a passion project. And I think that's what makes, I would tell my partners, my husband, like, that's what makes this dangerous. Like, this is, this is passion for me.

• 4:41Emma Grede?

  Yeah, it's more than just a business.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  Way more than that.

• 4:44Emma Grede?

  Because you actually came into the business when it was in its early stages, right? But it was like one employee, one product, almost zero infrastructure. And I want to understand a little bit more about how you discovered the business? And what was it about the brand that made you want to just go all in?

• 5:00Speaker 01

  So after our fourth exit, my husband, Shahab, and I said, we're not going to start a business, we're going to take some time off. But we said, you know, whatever we do next has to leave a legacy behind for the children. I have two daughters, 13 and 11, who mimic my every move today. And so that was my commitment to him. And his commitment back to me was, whatever we do, it's got to leave legacy. It can't be about the money. My husband ran into his high school friend, Sherbin, and he was like, hey, I have this company, it's called Cymbiotika. But he didn't have the background, like, he didn't know how to build the bones behind the company. My husband and I, our forte is we know how to build and scale companies. The things that he's great at, I'm not good at. We have very, very different skill sets.

• 5:45Speaker 01

  And we never try to be the same leader. So we've realised we have yin and yang. And we have a really powerful thing, we can build businesses together. So when he brought this concept up of Cymbiotika, what we realised was, one, there was a lot of upscale to scale the company. Secondly, it fell in line with what our goals were, with what our mission was. We can build this out where 10 years from now, where one day this is going to outlive us. This could be the legacy. And so it intrigued and ignited something in both of us to say, let's do this and let's go all in.

• 6:18Emma Grede?

  I've heard you say a couple of times before that you didn't want your daughters thinking that money was the legacy. And that you guys being so good at making money was how they should see you and experience you guys as parents. And so I wonder what your perspective is on this now as you continue building this company?

• 6:38Speaker 01

  So it's interesting, I'm a lot older now. And so with children, children give you wisdom, they give you perspective. The legacy that we can leave behind in our children is inheriting, not a business for them, but inheriting values. I want my children to be good humans. If I can build these two little humans to be incredible human beings, how like, our religion as a family is gratitude. How you show up in the world? How do people feel when they're in your company? How do you inspire people? How do you help people? How do you leave this world? Because every day we take, right? We take today, we took yesterday. But how do we leave this world? Giving more than we've taken.

• 7:20Speaker 01

  And if I can raise my two daughters to think, live, and move through the world like that, then I know that I'm not just alive, but I'm living.

• 7:26Emma Grede?

  Absolutely. And I feel like you've done so much. I really want the audience to understand your entrepreneurial journey. So will you just talk to me a little bit about your background and what you did prior to Cymbiotika?

• 7:39Speaker 01

  So prior to Cymbiotika, my husband and I worked both together. So first, I worked at T-Mobile, straight out of college, went to UCLA. And then I got recruited at T-Mobile. So I worked there for, gosh, over 12 years.

• 7:52Emma Grede?

  Like in a regular corporate job?

• 7:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, regular corporate job. I was like a sales girl. I would fill up my car with a bunch of collateral. And my first job was bonds, paper or plastic. I was the girl, funny, sorry, still in the khaki pants. And I would push, you know, 20, 30 carts. And people would feel bad because I couldn't even push them. That was my first job. So I'm not afraid to work hard. Like, I have no other choice. Success is my only option. And so when I meet young people, what I tell them is, you and I, we have the same 24 hours. What you decide to do with those 24 hours, that's going to determine your outcome. That's going to determine your future. So you get up today and you'll be better than you were yesterday.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  That's like that 1% mama mentality.

• 8:39Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  So I did corporate America, parents were going through a divorce. I supported my mom financially. It was a very, very tough time for us because my older brother was at Berkeley, I had two younger brothers, parents had a very, very nasty divorce. And my mother is my rock, she's my everything. And so I wanted to financially support her. And I hope to talk about this later because I think women having financial education and financial backing and that backbone is really important. Because my mother could never leave because she couldn't afford to.

• 9:15Emma Grede?

  Durana, you're on the Aspire podcast, we are going to get into the money, don't you worry. Yes, we will.

• 9:21Speaker 01

  So seeing my mother go through that, not have the choice to leave.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  Inspired me to work really hard and I never really cared about what my job was. And I always believed in myself. So I would be the first person in the office, the last person in the office. And I made every point to ensure that every executive knew my name and knew that like Durana left a footprint. So T-Mobile it was, started out as a sales associate, then went into operations, marketing, left my career there as a senior director in marketing overseeing all of California, Hawaii, Nevada. So did everything.

• 9:56Emma Grede?

  So you really climbed the ranks in that time.

• 9:58Speaker 01

  Really climbed the ranks.

• 9:59Emma Grede?

  Twelve years, like you went from sales girl and you went up and up and up.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  There was a few years where I got promoted every year.

• 10:04Emma Grede?

  Amazing. Incredible.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  And I had no children. And again, for me, in order to know where I'm going, I have to always reflect on where I've come from. I'm an Afghan American. I'm a girl that was born in Afghanistan. The women in my country have no rights today. So every day that I get up to go to work is an absolute privilege. And I'm going to make the most of it. And I'm going to win every day because I don't, I don't believe in failure. T-Mobile, I worked there. My husband actually worked at AT&T at the time. He would love the story, but when he, we, he first met me, he said, I'm going to marry you one day. And I looked at him and I said, is that the line that you tell the girls? And then what happens next? They give you their phone number. And I said, I leaned into him and I said, you know, you need to save that line for the chicken heads in the lounge.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  I'm not interested. So anyway, so we, uh, we met, uh, right around, uh, my second year of college. We, uh, we were at a dinner for him. It was an AT&T dinner and the CEO was there. And no one had ever asked me, what do you do, Ms. Elmi? And it was a very long rectangular table and the CEO, when he would talk, it was like quiet. And he, he looked over and said, Ms. Elmi, what do you do? And I was like, oh my God, this is like Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Right? I'm at T-Mobile, he's at AT&T. And I thought in that moment, I gotta be honest and I gotta just own it. I said, uh, his name was Ralph De La Vega. I said, Mr. De La Vega, I work at T-Mobile.

• 11:29Emma Grede?

  And he's like, what are you doing here at my table?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  Right, right. He was actually so nice. He didn't make me feel uncomfortable. And he said, he, he already knew that, by the way. So it was really more of like an integrity and honesty check. And he said, wonderful, we gotta figure out how to get you over on this side. And I was like, oh my goodness.

• 11:44Emma Grede?

  Did you make the move?

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Yes, I did. I made the move about two years after my husband. That was the journey and the spark of when we identified that we can work together.

• 11:53Emma Grede?

  Wow. So take me from this. So you've got this job where you're 12 years in corporate. How do you make the, the jump into founder entrepreneur? Like what happens there?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Started a family, started, um, learning about the first steps of my daughter through the cameras on my phone. And then I realized that pre-kids, my definition of wealth was a lot of really nice bags. I love shoes. Like I'm really a fashion girl. And so my definition of like success and wealth was going into a retail store and saying, oh, I'll take two of those. Not worrying about the price tag. But when I had children, I was like, whoa, my priorities screwed. My definition of success changed so rapidly. Success to me was being able to own my own time. And I didn't own my own time. Corporate America did. And that wasn't a bad thing because at that time, I, pre-kids, I didn't have children.

• 12:48Speaker 01

  So it's okay. I could dedicate myself to corporate America, but my priorities changed. I wanted to be there for my children.

• 12:54Emma Grede?

  And becoming an entrepreneur enabled you to do that?

• 12:57Speaker 01

  It did.

• 12:57Emma Grede?

  So what was your first rodeo? Tell me like, what did you do?

• 13:00Speaker 01

  God, uh, first rodeo, we, so we both quit on the same week. And we decided that we were going to invest in ourself. Start with yourself. I know someone that wrote a really great book. And so we started with ourself. We invested in ourselves and we opened our own retail store. It was called Cricket Wireless. So AT&T had a non-contracted business. It was Cricket Wireless. We started our first retail store. We scaled it over a hundred and fifty. And then it was an overnight, of course. But like, this was again, where like, we were like, wow, we can do this. You are the numbers guy, you're the finance guy, you know how to build, scale. And my husband's brilliant. And then I'm more like on the creative side. I'm the people, I have the culture. I know how to, he can give me an idea and has a vision. I know how to execute it.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  So it was a really beautiful balance. So that was the first entrepreneur journey.

• 13:48Emma Grede?

  How incredible. I mean, looking across your career, what's clear is that you have been excellent in sales and sales is just one of those kind of overlooked things in business that everybody has to touch at some point in their business journey. What do you think the three things are that have enabled you to be so successful at retail? Because when I look at Cymbiotika, you really are in all of the places and the spaces that you would want to be. But that takes a certain skill set. And I'm imagining that your entire career, building both, uh, T-Mobile and AT&T really gave you a lot of chops to be able to be pretty proficient in sales.

• 14:25Speaker 01

  Beautifully said. I love the way you talk. Everything just sounds beautiful. First, I would say you have to become obsessed with the customer. And there's two layers of customer. There's, for me as founders, your customer is your team. They're my first customers. And then it's your community, the customers that buy into your product. So no matter what your product, I would say your product subset is, you've got to become obsessed with the people internally and externally. So that's always been my jam. I love people. I always say that it doesn't matter what line of work you're in. You're selling something. You're selling an idea. You're selling yourself. You're selling a product.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  So first I would say that. Then I would say education. Education is, is critical. It's been our foundation at Cymbiotika since day one. We've never been obsessed with selling a product. We've been obsessed with building a brand that customers want to be a part of. Building a brand that can outlive us, building a brand that could be a legacy. And so customer has been number one for us. Culture, most people, people don't realize, but culture is the heartbeat of your company. And I know we work in an environment today where it's hybrid and remote. The magic behind Cymbiotika is the team. And it's the culture that we build. Cause again, we want everyone to show up. Everyone has a seat at the table. And we want everyone to get to that table fast and have an opinion.

• 15:48Emma Grede?

  Absolutely. So talk to me about that first exit, because that is always a magical moment for any founder. But you've exited multiple times. And I'm sure that's informing so many of the decisions that you're making with Cymbiotika today. But tell me about the first one, that moment that, you know, you get some cash, you've built something, you get to exit something. And how does that inform what you do today?

• 16:11Speaker 01

  So I would say first, it gave me confidence that I can do this again. It was a reflection and inflection point to identify what were the things that we learned? What could we have done differently? And what's really beautiful about our journey is because this one's a passion project. We will talk about financing and, but like for us, this one's so different. We, we were very, very cautious and careful that we didn't take financing at Cymbiotika. Because this was a different product subset. We were actually going to be a part of people's health, their daily routine, their daily ritual. So we wanted to be bootstrapping. Bootstrap forces you discipline.

• 16:51Emma Grede?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:52Speaker 01

  And most people don't realize that. And then also the entrepreneur journey forces you to face every unhealed part of yourself. And shit, if you got like, if you got some things going on, you're going to face every single one of those. The other thing that we learned was at first, you know, obviously when things don't work out and you have failures, it's very personal. But then you, as you mature, I think with age, as you mature with businesses, as you mature with scale, you realize that failure is the admission of success. And so we learned to, you know, accept failure. We learned to accept and let go of control. We learned how to hire better leaders and we just learned the magic behind scaling businesses.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  But really understanding that, you know, your brand, you have to have a differentiator. Education is key. The customer journey is everything. And you gotta believe your why has to be the anchor of how you do, what you do every day. And it's gotta be your North Star.

• 18:00Emma Grede?

  So how, after building so many businesses and successfully exiting so many businesses, why was your decision to go into another one? Because I feel like so much happens in each and every business. And when you do that multiple times, like it's draining, you get tired. Like what was it in the first four that you love so much that you were like, we gotta do this again?

• 18:22Speaker 01

  I think like the journey of getting to know people, um, all of them were so different. So one was cell phone. What was an accessory business? We went into the music business. So all of them were very different. I think that.

• 18:34Emma Grede?

  And nothing in the kind of healthcare and wellness space. Interesting.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  We've always been into health and wellness. So I think this one aligned with us the best in terms of who we were as people. And then we also were at this crossroad of like getting older and realizing that like real wealth wasn't the exits. It's how we feel every day, how we show up, how we move our thoughts.

• 18:55Emma Grede?

  And that changes so much, as you say, like as you get older and as you have kids. When you look across the portfolio of businesses that you've had and you kind of look at what you're doing today, what are the common denominators? Like what doesn't change? Cause you guys are clearly very good sophisticated operators.

• 19:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:12Emma Grede?

  Or you wouldn't be able to have that success. And I'm wondering what skills you're able to take from one thing into the next thing. Because again, it's like an accessories business is very different from the wellness business. And so what are you able to actually extrapolate from everything that, that moves with you into the next thing?

• 19:29Speaker 01

  So I'll say the most, um, important relationship in all of these businesses is the relationship and the dynamic and the love and respect between my husband and I. If that isn't constant, none of these businesses would survive. Like every day, I, we, we, we obviously work in the office that we drive in together.

• 19:49Emma Grede?

  You do?

• 19:50Speaker 01

  We do.

• 19:51Emma Grede?

  Oh, I refuse to drive in with my husband.

• 19:52Speaker 01

  We do.

• 19:53Emma Grede?

  You do? Because then don't one of you get on the phone and then the other ones are having to wait to get off the phone? I can't do that.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no, we do that. We do that. Like, I'll nudge him, like, get off the phone, I have a conference call.

• 20:01Emma Grede?

  You're a better woman than I am.

• 20:03Speaker 01

  You know, it's, but it's a short drive. It's a very short drive. It's only like 12 minutes.

• 20:07Emma Grede?

  I mean, I have a 25 minute drive and I can't stand it. So, I don't know.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  And, and sometimes-

• 20:11Emma Grede?

  How long have you been together?

• 20:12Speaker 01

  27 years.

• 20:13Emma Grede?

  Oh, Lord.

• 20:13Speaker 01

  We just celebrated 27.

• 20:15Emma Grede?

  Congratulations to you.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Thank you. Work in progress every day. But I would tell you, that has had to been the most constant thing. And I tell my kids the same thing. Do you know, we'll sit at the dinner table and I go, do you know who I love here? And they're like, me, mommy, me. And I'm like, no, daddy.

• 20:30Emma Grede?

  Daddy.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that has been the most constant foundation to every single business. It doesn't matter what the business has been, if the love and the respect between him and I have been strong, and that's like the ground that I walk on, then I believe we can get through anything together.

• 20:47Emma Grede?

  No doubt. And I think that that belief and that kind of, you know, simpatico relationship between the two of you has to be so important. But there's also like an operational layer to all of that, right? What is the, I'm just trying to understand, like, what you guys have? Like, what's the secret sauce that you've been able to weave between everything that you've done and now into Cymbiotika?

• 21:09Speaker 01

  So one, I think that you've got to, tech has got to be a big part of your company. Infrastructure is really, really important. We've always had everything in-house. That's kind of our magic thing is, I think in-house is very, very important because there's no way you can be obsessed with the customer and outsource things.

• 21:27Emma Grede?

  So what does that extend to? When you say in-house, like, are you talking like warehousing and like, like how much is in-house?

• 21:35Speaker 01

  Girl, all of it.

• 21:37Emma Grede?

  Get out.

• 21:37Speaker 01

  Fulfillment, warehouse, operations, financing, uh, marketing, digital, tech, AI, customer experience. And the reason why, so we just moved into a 60,000 square foot headquarters. The reason why is, again, it goes back to the fundamentals of our belief. If you are truly obsessed with the customer journey, every single time that a customer reaches out to marketing or reaches out to customer experience, that's your customer touch point, right? So I, to me, my customer experience team, they're the ones that's, that's really shaping our brand. And so I want to have a very close relationship with all these departments.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  Every time we've brought a function closer, we've been able to move at speed. We've got data, there's been accountability, and so there's that speed of trust for us.

• 22:30Emma Grede?

  Yeah, and it's all right there in your office. It's pretty impressive. So take me back to the early days. You discover this brand, you and your husband decide that you are going to, are you in, like, did you have to invest in the brand or were you able? Okay, so what, tell, tell me that. What did you initially invest in Cymbiotika? And then how did you decide and allocate like where the money was going to go? Especially considering that this wasn't a space that you knew much about, even though you were very great business people.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, so first we lived in the East Coast. We decided that if we were going to do this, we were going to build out a headquarters and really build an infrastructure and build a team. So we moved from the East Coast over to the West Coast. That was like the first real investment that we made. Then obviously, in order to build and scale, you need capital. So we took the investments that we had had in our prior businesses and we invested in Cymbiotika. The reason we did that is because we really, really believe, like, we both, again, all three of us had this like deep why as to like, we've lost people that we can't bring back that have been such a big part of our lives. So now let's create a movement where health is accessible. You have easy information to understanding, you know, how your body absorbs certain things.

• 23:40Speaker 01

  So for us, we invested in Cymbiotika because we believed in the mission. And so my husband and I put in the financial capital. And the thing was, is when we dissected the category, there was a lack of transparency. There was a lot of products that were used with synthetics, artificial sugars, education wasn't there. And there really wasn't a category leader, to be quite honest with you. And for us, we wanted to hone in on a specific advanced delivery system, which was liposomal. Liposomal encapsulates the nutrients, delivers the highest bioavailability, I feel like an infomercial, and then your body absorbs it.

• 24:16Emma Grede?

  I read in the beginning, you know, the company's doing sub $1 million. And in those years, like 2019, 2020, you grew the company from a million to 5 million.

• 24:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:26Emma Grede?

  That takes a lot. And I wonder what it took to actually meet that type of demand in the business, like, right out the gate.

• 24:32Speaker 01

  Well, I'll tell you, lots of trade-offs. Trade-offs of not spending time with my family. Trade-offs of missing so many opportunities at the kid's school. But what it took was a level of discipline. Because people see the end result, even they look at one to, 1 million to 5 million, 5 million to 10, 10 to 40. We failed so much in the journey. We failed, we would get up, we would pivot, we would make quick decisions. The one thing I would say was constant was we were always in office. We brought in leaders that we trusted. We brought in capable people that were already experienced, that were already doing where we wanted to go. But yeah, I mean, we just, we failed a lot. And, but we also just never gave up.

• 25:14Speaker 01

  The consistency and the discipline were two constants that for us, no matter what the variable outside of that was, we would show up every day, have the discipline and be consistent.

• 25:25Emma Grede?

  When you look back over the last two years, where the growth has been so insane, what do you think the biggest growth enablers have been for Cymbiotika's like overall growth?

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh. Overall growth, I would say first is infrastructure. Then it's when we realized that a, a decision is the wrong decision, very quickly taking the data, accepting it and moving it to the right direction.

• 25:51Emma Grede?

  Very quickly being the thing.

• 25:52Speaker 01

  Very quickly. We always say our, the data doesn't have a bigger seat at the table than our egos. And so being able to make quick decisions and, and being able to pivot very quickly. Uh, I would say the other thing is building redundancies, being able to scale and know that for us, like retail, these past two years has been pretty explosive. It's been a goal of ours. We really, really expanded our retail footprint. But we wanted to make sure that, one, it didn't compromise the efficacy of our products. Secondly, we had redundancies to be able to scale at the speed. I would say, speed isn't, uh, the challenge. You gotta build an, if, you gotta be able to build an infrastructure that could keep up with the speed.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  You gotta be able to build a team that, you know, knows where you're going and that's capable, leaders, right? That can build teams below them. Early on, we, you, as founders, we had the vision. But now where we're at is we need leaders that can expand our vision. We need leaders that can build teams and infrastructure and everything isn't so founder dependency.

• 26:54Emma Grede?

  Yes. So Joanna, what do you think the best piece of advice is that you could give someone whose business is actually growing faster than they can keep up with right now?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  I would say, build an infrastructure, hire leaders that have already been where you are trying to get to. Trust them. Let go of control, because I think that I'm very much into every detail. But letting go of control actually gave us velocity and speed. And then reinvest back in the business. You've got to reinvest back in the business. And you gotta believe in your hardest moments. You gotta know your why.

• 27:30Emma Grede?

  So you obviously bootstrapped the business for the first five years. What changed and made you feel like, okay, now is the time to raise? Because I have conversations with so many people and they're like, when is the infliction point? What are the signals? What are the signs? And how do you know the moment is right?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Well, I would say if we were to reflect back, we probably would have gone to market sooner. We went to market. We're a little too expensive now, right? So one is, it was really important for us because, again, this is touching people's health. It was really important for us to have discipline, really learn through our mistakes. We didn't want to take financing and learn on other people's money. We wanted to learn on our own.

• 28:17Emma Grede?

  Fair.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  So that was first. Secondly, I would say is, once we were able to prove it out for ourselves, we then said, let's go raise. And what we did is, we did a very small, very strategic round with our good friend, Dave Grubman.

• 28:32Emma Grede?

  Love Dave.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Love great. Yeah, love Dave, Isabella, all of them. We were just with them in Miami for Style Saves. But Dave was instrumental, where he said, guys, like, there's so many instrumental people in this ecosystem where they're living this lifestyle. Hailey Beaver, uh, God, there's so many. Gunna, Peso Pluma, uh, Alaso, Marshmello, Shalizi. I mean, the names go on.

• 28:58Emma Grede?

  Sounds like a Coachella, like, lineup to me.

• 29:01Speaker 01

  Kendall Jenner, right? Alex Earl. And so like, there was an ecosystem of people that were already living this life.

• 29:08Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 29:09Speaker 01

  So when we did this $25 million raise, we didn't do it for the capital. What we needed is air coverage.

• 29:15Emma Grede?

  God. So wait a minute, the 25, because I, I really want to get this right, right? So it's like, you first did almost like a friends and family raise-

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:22Emma Grede?

  With Dave. That's the $25 million raise?

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 29:25Emma Grede?

  Okay.

• 29:26Speaker 01

  And that included all the, the celebrities and all the artists and all the very influential people.

• 29:31Emma Grede?

  Which was my next question, because that to me feels like one of the things that really sets you apart. Apart, aside from really superior product- And this kind of very new way that people are taking supplements because it is still kind of new in the grand scheme of things. Why Dave, like what did he bring that somebody from a kind of more traditional capital background couldn't?

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. So Dave, first and foremost.

• 29:58Emma Grede?

  Apart from the fact that he's just absolutely lovely, but that, you know, that aside, this was your baby in your business.

• 30:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's lovely. Dave has become our family. We trusted Dave. Dave was using our products. So he really, he understood the product from the inside. And there is such a bridge of trust with Dave. Like, we knew he was gonna bring in the right people that believed in our mission. We'd never wanted to and we never will let go of the controls of the company where it compromises our efficacy and we move away from our mission. For us, like, Dave believed in what we're doing. He believed in this, like, we're gonna build a legacy, we're gonna build a movement. And so that is what kind of ignited us to work with Dave. And again, no one better than to work with someone who's your friend and your family and our families know each other, kids know each other.

• 30:45Emma Grede?

  And somebody who's an actual user of the product.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  And sorry, Dave, by the way, his superpower, which I was like, Dave, you're gonna get into this whole other business. He's such a connector. Because he's so well respected, because people know him. And like, Dave, you know, Dave, there's no way Dave's gonna stand behind something if he doesn't believe in it. And he'll call your shit out if he like, doesn't believe it's quality, it's made a difference. So I think there's also this like realism of like Dave, like if Dave recommends it, you know it's good.

• 31:13Emma Grede?

  Yeah, I couldn't agree with you more. How much of bringing him on board was an intentional marketing tactic? Because of course, as you say, with Dave, comes the sphere of influence, comes all of the great friends, comes some of the incredible people that are on your cap table now. So how much of that was deliberate on your part?

• 31:31Speaker 01

  A lot of it, most of it, absolutely. Because again, it wasn't the capital that we needed. What we needed, the air coverage from these very influential people. You look at Gunna and the transformation of his body. It's like his rip and sip daily ritual. I love when he does the post of like breakfast and it's four products. It's so aspirational to see all these different people in these different walks of life. And the one commonality that they have is rip and sip. The one commonality they have is self-love. It's taking care of yourself. It's what are you putting in your body? And so that's what we needed from this strategic group that we brought on was that air coverage, was them telling their story in a very organic, authentic way of how Cymbiotika's made an impact in their life. How Cymbiotika allows them to travel and show up and get on

• 32:16Speaker 01

  stage and be the best version of themselves to not just their fans, but to themselves and everyone around them.

• 32:22Emma Grede?

  And how valuable have those endorsements been to you and the business? Like, did they actually work?

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Incredibly valuable. Yeah. I mean, we've been able to establish beautiful friendships out of it, to be honest with you. And I'm still an awe and inspired by like Haley's kindness. I always tell everyone, she's drop dead gorgeous, but like her kindness as a girl, what a girl's girl she is, is even more beautiful.

• 32:45Emma Grede?

  And I'm assuming she shifts some units too?

• 32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, she does, absolutely. And so like, it's wonderful because we don't pay any of these guys to post. We also don't have them on any kind of posting schedule. It's all organic.

• 32:58Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 32:58Speaker 01

  And so that's.

• 32:59Emma Grede?

  Well, they're on the cap table, right? So it's like, it's part of their, you know, they're there, they do what they do. They love the product and they're incentivized because they're part of the business.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. And some of them are board members as well.

• 33:09Emma Grede?

  Incredible. Who's on the board? Give me the names.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Haley Beaver.

• 33:12Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 33:13Speaker 01

  David Grotman, Shervin Pershever, who started, you know, Uber. And so we wanted people with a lot of like specialized expertise that would be able to provide us like, oh my gosh, another one, Damon John, another one of my favorite humans.

• 33:26Emma Grede?

  Love Damon.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I mean.

• 33:28Emma Grede?

  Alex Earl more recently.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Alex Earl, yeah. So we've, we're just incredible people, to be honest with you. And I think the most beautiful part of the whole journey was the fact that they use our products, which was kind of a non-negotiable for us. And then secondly, they believe in what we're doing and what we're trying to accomplish.

• 33:45Emma Grede?

  So once you take the $25 million of investment, you're scaling, you're growing, you have the momentum of everybody else that's on the cap table, the business continues to thrive to go into retail, you manage to kind of, you know, be very clear about what you're doing and very focused. What are the next steps and where are you guys now? Do you, do you go and then raise more capital? I'm just like interested in the journey for people to really understand what it looks like to build something like this. Because I have like no doubt that you are on the way to your fifth exit, right? Like, that's not a.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Girl.

• 34:20Emma Grede?

  Come on.

• 34:20Speaker 01

  To your.

• 34:22Emma Grede?

  My mouth to God's ears.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. That is absolutely the goal. So one is we did a full rebrand. You're gonna see our retail packaging is, I'm so proud of this. We are going to really, really get into experiential. I think the way people remember your brand is through the experience that you've delivered to them. On a personal note, if I have a party at my house and I invite you on Friday for a Saturday party, I get 100% attendance. And the reason why is because I'm into every detail and I care about the experience. So for us, this journey of people purchasing our products, bringing it into their lives is very personal. We're launching two incredible products and there's gonna be, I would say, a tremendous amount of growth in retail. We're going into Walmart

• 35:08Speaker 01

  this October, Sam's Club is before the end of the year, and then Costco next year.

• 35:13Emma Grede?

  I mean, look at you.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Girl, I am fired up. You know, we talked a little bit earlier about Oprah, like, I, you're 46 years old, girl. I used to say like, God, it's kind of old, but I'll tell you, I have never felt more in my power than I do today. And I feel like I'm just getting started.

• 35:33Emma Grede?

  I have no doubt. I mean, honestly, I feel like I can see that. I really, really want to talk to you about money. Because what I love about you is that you speak very openly about it and you have a very specific opinion. And I want to understand how you feel. Because obviously, you're a married woman, but you have financial independence. Has having your own money changed the way that you actually move through the world?

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Yeah. And again, this is not an indictment to women who don't work or mothers who stay home. But I will say that people think that, first off, when you're married, wanting to know and educate yourself about the finances doesn't mean you're doing that because you're worried that the marriage is gonna fail. I actually think the opposite. When women know about the finances and women build that backbone for themselves, whatever it is, you move differently. You move with confidence. And for me, it's always, I've had such a strong backbone that my husband and I, like, he always, we always have this running joke, but like, I,

• 36:39Speaker 01

  I can afford to leave. I would never leave. I love the man. But it gives me that freedom. It gives me that confidence. It gives me that agency. So I think it's very important for a woman to know about finances. And I think times have changed today, right? And so for me, if we're building something, and we as my husband and I, I want to be alongside him, brick by brick. Because shit, you know, you're not gonna break that down when you've been building that brick by brick. And so the reason why our relationship's so strong is because he knows, you know, I've built this with you, baby boy. So, and my mother, my mother always says, it takes a lifetime to

• 37:21Speaker 01

  build something, you can crush it overnight. But because we've built it together, the likelihood of us breaking it apart, no, I don't think so.

• 37:32Emma Grede?

  Not happening.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  We're gonna work at that every day.

• 37:34Emma Grede?

  I, after you've had all of this success, like, how important is the money piece to you? Because I hear what you said at the top of this interview. And it's clear, it's not like you're just doing this for the money, but you know, you're a woman with amazing jewelry and gorgeous clothes and you like nice things and you live a good life. How important is it that you reach a certain benchmark or you meet the full realization of this company? Like, how do you think through that right now?

• 38:00Speaker 01

  So again, because I grew up so poor, it'd be a lie if I told you that money wasn't important to me as a child. It was very important for me. I saw what my mom sacrificed. My mom stayed in the house because she didn't have the money to go. So she had to compromise her self-respect. She had to compromise so much, her youth. As a young girl, I never ever wanted to be in that position. But now, having two daughters, having a beautiful, healthy relationship with my husband and best friend, money to me gives me freedom. Freedom to think what I want to think, freedom to decide who's going to be my friend, freedom to like do what I want to do. And so money's so important for me, but it's just shifted.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  And I don't think it's the most important thing, but you gotta have money. Like anyone that says that you don't need money, that's like, I don't know if I agree with that. You need money to be able to do what you want to do one day. And today, I'm in a position where I could do what I want to do, but I'm not done building. And money isn't everything, and I want to teach my daughters that. And how I do that is take them to style saves, make them work the events. By giving back, giving back is such a, like, I love giving back. I always say if gratitude is your religion and you give back, you get tenfold without even realizing. I give, but I get back in ways that I can't even tell you. Like my spirituality, the people that come into my life, that I know is God giving back to me every single day. And I feel so grateful for that.

• 39:26Emma Grede?

  And as an Afghan woman, you must think so much about that in relation to where you're from. The give back, the philanthropic piece.

• 39:33Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Ever since my very first job at the age of 16, I've always given back. I've built three schools in Afghanistan. I want my legacy to be how many women that I can touch and inspire. I would tell my little girls today, not on Instagram, but I say, you know, one day you'll realize what the blue checkmark is. And the real blue checkmark, baby girl, it's how other women feel in your company. It's how you inspire and ignite them. And like, I want that to be my legacy. I want the women around, you saw, I showed up with like my crew of women. I love women, I love girls. I want them to sit in this seat and do it better than I did. And if I, if I'm doing that to me, that's the legacy, right? It's not about the money, it's not about how many companies, but it's about how many lives we can change. It's about empowering women.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  And then again, coming from Afghanistan where today, in this exact moment, the women of my country have no rights. That fuels me. So when we talk about enough, I want to be able to do more for them.

• 40:29Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  And I, you know, one of the goals in building this like generational wealth is how much I can help my women back home and here. And not just the women of Afghanistan, but women around the world. I've had some incredible female mentors. And I know like being in this seat today, Emma, I dreamed of being in rooms with women like you. And so I want other women to feel that same way. And I want other women, not to get emotional, but I want other women to know that they can too.

• 41:02Emma Grede?

  Yeah, that's real leadership. I mean, and it was amazing seeing you turn up with your like literal girl gang today. I was like, you roll really deep. Like all of these amazing women, everybody knows exactly what they're doing and they know their role. So when you think about leadership, I mean, listen, we all evolve as leaders over the years. When you think about your style of leadership and things that have evolved, what have you had to unlearn in the last six years since you've had this company?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  I think I've had to unlearn that being wrong is okay. It's okay, it's not ego. It's just take the data. I've learned to be less emotional. And I'm still practicing that, the art of not allowing my emotions to take over me.

• 41:44Emma Grede?

  It's hard, that's a hard one.

• 41:45Speaker 01

  So hard, it's so hard. I mean, I, I'm like Oprah, we need a moment together.

• 41:52Speaker 01

  I've learned that the most expensive thing that I own are my thoughts. It's the thing that I tell my children every day when I drop them off at school. What's, what's the most expensive thing you own, Yasmin, Ariana? And they go, they roll their eyes, they tell me how cringe I am. They say, mommy, my thoughts. So I practice that every day.

• 42:09Emma Grede?

  That is a great way to teach kids and to frame it as them as something that not only do they own, but it's expensive if you get it wrong. Because the stories we tell ourselves, that will shape our entire reality.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, isn't that true?

• 42:23Emma Grede?

  It's a really, it's a really great way to talk to young children about that. I love, I'm going to steal that off of you.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:28Emma Grede?

  A hundred percent, that's, that's coming home with me.

• 42:39Emma Grede?

  I read somewhere that you do all the final hiring and final interviewing yourself.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Sounds crazy, huh?

• 42:45Emma Grede?

  I think it is just crazy, but I love this because I know you have a hell of a lot of staff. Why is it so important to you that at this stage of the business, you still do that?

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Because the right leader will propel my culture and the wrong one conversely will destroy it.

• 43:02Emma Grede?

  Right.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  First off, those interviews are about seven minutes long.

• 43:06Emma Grede?

  So you're in and out, you're fine, your final stamp of approval.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  They're not an hour. I actually don't even want the resume. So I think resume tells you about someone's experience, but what I want to know is about your character. I want to know about the adversity you've gone through in your life. How'd you handle it? I want to know your perspective. I want to know about your family. I want to know about how you show up for yourself.

• 43:25Emma Grede?

  Those are the questions you ask to hire for character.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Those are the most important things for me. I want to know how you show up for yourself. I want to know how you define self-discipline and self-love. And you know, so what, what's the thing that triggers you? What inspires you?

• 43:40Emma Grede?

  It's a good answer for you.

• 43:41Speaker 01

  I like if someone takes the time to take care of themselves. Because to me, it's not about you going to the gym or being fit, but it tells me that you have discipline. If you have discipline with yourself, you can have discipline at work. I think the other thing is being inspired and being motivated. And I love when someone can recognize that they've gone through adversity, have accepted it, and they can go right through it.

• 44:03Emma Grede?

  Yes.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Because we're going to go through a lot of adversity. So I need to know that you are strong enough that you can go through more. And here's the other thing, so I, I call it like soul searching. I, I did an audit on my, on my soul and on my frequency many, many years back.

• 44:18Emma Grede?

  Stop it.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Like I kind of detached myself from all things in the world. And then I would slowly like reintroduce and hang out with someone and be like, huh, their frequency made me feel good, I felt inspired. Or like, they don't make me feel good.

• 44:30Emma Grede?

  I know.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  So the other part of it is, is like, how does this person make me feel? Right? Because that's a really important thing. I'm going to be with this person every single day. Like Rainie, who is sitting right here with her beautiful face, like her energy is electrifying.

• 44:45Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  I mean, like you can't even have a down day. This girl comes in, she's like practically does a backflip with just an idea. I love that kind of energy. Like I'm like, how do I make a hundred Rainies? So for me, like, I also want to know what kind of frequency do you show up with?

• 45:00Emma Grede?

  So you want to show up to work every day in a good mood, but you do work with your husband. So let's just talk about that a little bit. Because as you know, so do I, and now the place where we have a similarity. How do you navigate disagreements when you are spouses and business partners?

• 45:14Speaker 01

  Oh, well, it's been work in progress is the honest truth. That's what actually I think now, again, over the years, what I've learned is part of the magic is disagreeing. I am not the wife that says yes to everything. I'm a wife that wants to challenge him. And the reason why is because I think the way I think, I look out for him and I catch the blind spots that he's not thinking about. We again are very, very different leaders. And so when we have agreements where we don't align, I would lie to you if I told you that we didn't go home with it. And I would be like, you could be making dinner tonight, I'm not making you anything. But I just know at the end of the day, our goals are the same in terms of where we're trying to get to.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  So it's, it's a framework that I'm trying to work on now, which is when I'm upset, I want to step away from what I'm upset about because I don't want my emotions to make a decision. And so if I'm upset about something or I don't agree with something, I put it aside. I don't want to discuss it until I'm a better state of mind, which is like most, most of the time it's the next day.

• 46:17Emma Grede?

  And that's what you do. You're literally step away from the problem for a second.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  I have to.

• 46:20Emma Grede?

  Take a beat and return to it later.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I feel like as women, we're like emotional beings, right? So also what's the genius behind us? We've got that EQ. I have never made a good decision when I've been emotional. I've only had a trigger response because it's my emotion telling you to do that. But my emotion isn't always the answer. So I want to make sure that I make like a, a wise decision.

• 46:44Emma Grede?

  Tell me about a decision that you were absolutely convinced was the right thing for the business, and it turned out to be wrong? And how you know when it's time to just like change course?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  Oof, um, I think for me, I've always been really passionate about experiential. And marketing has really changed. So there was a time where I took a.

• 47:02Emma Grede?

  Oh, just.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I kind of stood to my team and said, listen, like the marketing agency is changing today. We have to do things differently. Marketing is no longer the paid as, it's no longer meta, it's the experience. And so I think that's one thing I stood my ground on and it took me a while to kind of turn the corner with the team and do some experiential where I could prove out the ROI. But that's something that I've like really firmly believed in since day one.

• 47:32Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 47:32Speaker 01

  I think experiential is everything. It's how people remember you when they come into your home. It's how people will remember your brand and it's how you can capture the emotion where you become unforgettable.

• 47:44Emma Grede?

  You're right. And I think it's really difficult for people to make those changes within their business. Cause we've all seen that, right? We've all seen that traditional digital isn't working. And, you know, giving us the ROI, the return on our investment like it used to. But moving off of something that's worked for so long and taking a bet on something else is scary for a business, especially when you have to do it at the scale you're doing it. So what do you look for from a conviction point of view to know like, okay, we're going to really go into experiential? Because of course you have been in this digital marketing space. You've obviously done a lot of work with influencer and celebrity. And for the longest time, that was all up, working, working, working.

• 48:25Emma Grede?

  As it dissipates and you have to do something else, like talk me through like the decision-making process and how you go, you know what, I'm going to bet on that.

• 48:33Speaker 01

  So we had an event last year. We had, we were launching an altar, which was the first time that we were intersecting beauty and wellness. So I wanted to throw an event here in LA and I wanted to be experiential. There are four products we were launching with and I wanted each room to represent, evoke a different emotion within the community, within the influencers, within everyone that showed up. So it was upwards of a million dollar investment and in four hours, we had over three billion impressions. And that's a market value of roughly $29 million. And so for me, I was really, really passionate about proving this out to my team that you have to evoke an emotion.

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Like it's not, you have to teach people how to integrate their products into their daily lives. That's how they're going to remember for it to become a ritual. So that altar party for us was, I would say, a really massive turning point. It was a proof point that experiential is a new wave of marketing. I want to put every detail in those moments because it's those moments that people remember. And so I'm excited, as we talked about the revamp that we're doing, we're doing a repackaging. We're launching a very, very big campaign with Ratner and OBB that I am so excited about. I love the whole Ratner, OBB, James, like the entire team. They're my favorite.

• 49:54Emma Grede?

  They're an amazing group of people doing really exciting things. And so again, like an untraditional partnership, perhaps if you just like laid it out on the table. But that's what makes it so interesting. And to me, there's no surprise that experiential is what we're seeing as like the wave of what's working in businesses was people are craving being in person and being together. I think we've all understood that we don't want to live entirely inside a machine. And so if we can get people together in real life, that makes us feel good.

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Everyone needs people, right?

• 50:25Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Women, women need women to support them. Women need women to, to rally up and, and lock arms. But same thing, I mean, I think in, in a company within your brand, community builds advocates and advocates builds legacy and legacy builds a movement.

• 50:40Emma Grede?

  Damn right it does. You've got over 4,000 doors. We're talking Target, Alter, Sprouts, Whole Foods. Each of those are very, very different ecosystems and equally, I'm sure each have their own challenges of how you do business. How have you been able to be successful? And will you just talk me through perhaps some of the challenges that you have experienced for people that are listening? That are hoping to go into retail or are in retail and facing some of that stuff right now?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  So now over 89,000 distribution points worldwide.

• 51:13Emma Grede?

  That's insane.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, one, I think you've got to have the capital if you're going to expand into retail. You've got to be able to release inventory and not expect that money to come back. You have to, very, very important.

• 51:26Emma Grede?

  You've got to be willing to wait the 120, sometimes 150 days.

• 51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, very true. And then also you don't need to necessarily go into every retailer with the same SKUs. You need to really understand their customers. And Target, we went in with six SKUs. You've got to test it out. And then sometimes I think it sounds very glamorous to say, I'm in all stores nationwide. But you should really kind of pilot the markets to understand the customers, to understand the retail landscape.

• 51:55Emma Grede?

  Yeah, say that again.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:57Emma Grede?

  You don't need to go into all doors, even if you're offered all doors, right? It's like, understand it, learn that business, see how they roll, see if your product resonates, see what's resonating and then expand.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 52:11Emma Grede?

  If the offer was there, it'll always be there.

• 52:13Speaker 01

  It'll always be there. Right. And I think, again, it's a very expensive mistake just because they offer you to go into the door. I mean, you've got to do what's right for your business. The other thing is if you're a category leader like we've been in the advanced liposomal delivery, you have to make sure that before you go into retail, your consumers know what you, what you are, what differentiates you. Cause you only got a few seconds on the shelf. So there's got to be a differentiator. And then I think price architect is really important. So for us, you know, we started out the business heavily in D to C. Our retail packaging was D to C, our price points, our 30 counts. As you launch into retail, you've got to look at it differently. Customers look like, I'm, I'm, I love to go into a Target.

• 52:56Speaker 01

  So I'm not maybe not going to buy a 30 count. I may want to buy a 12 count. So you need to really think about your price architect, your SKU counts. That's going to cater to that specific retailer.

• 53:07Emma Grede?

  What do you think that people misunderstand most about your business in your category right now, considering it's also new?

• 53:13Speaker 01

  All supplements are created equal. They're not. Most of the time, people are told to take a handful of supplements. They don't know why they're taking the handful. They don't know how their body's absorbing it. So I think absorption rate is the first thing that's highly, highly misunderstood. The delivery system, understanding how products are made. We've never outsourced anything. We actually don't even outsource our manufacturing. We do everything here in the United States. We're very, very proud of that. So I would say the efficacy and the delivery system and then how your body absorbs it.

• 53:45Emma Grede?

  I want to double back because we spoke a little bit about money and wealth. And you recently experienced something really frightening and scary with your family. And I only mention this because you've spoken about it a little bit publicly, but there was a robbery incident. And I wonder how that's changed the way that you think about safety, the way you think about wealth for you and your family and being visible as a founder. Like where are you at with that right now, given the horrendous experience that you went through?

• 54:16Speaker 01

  I've actually haven't like publicly come on a platform like this and never talked about it. It was probably the hardest thing that I've ever experienced in my life. And to have my children wake up at gunpoint is truly unfathomable. It's, it's tough today, right? Because we live in a time where people want to know the founders behind the brand. And so we have a responsibility to like be out there. And what happened in Cannes, I wasn't out and about in the streets and partying with my things. Actually, we were going to a few fashion shows. So I had prepared for the Dolce Gabbana show, which was one week long.

• 55:00Speaker 01

  We were going to the Emery show in Paris. There were all these different kind of events that were happening. So I packed up for it. And thank God, thank God that I met Oprah that day. Cause her and I exchanged a few words and she gave me a power and a strength that day. I left her around two o'clock and, you know, had an incredible event with OBB there. Came home early and was like on such a high. Like I wanted to unpack my day with my husband. I'm like, let's hurry up and get in bed. Let's, I gotta tell you, tell you about Oprah and the way she made me feel and her energy and. And then, you know, we talked about our day and how incredible it was, the amazing people we had met.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  And then 3:15, uh, we woke up to screams. My, uh, my chief of staff was also in the house with us. And, um, you know, I learned a lot about my own strength. Because, uh, in that moment, I looked at the guy and I said, you believe in God?

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Please put your gun down. Like I'll give you everything. You learn in that moment that nothing matters. Besides your family, you know, of course I, I have regrets because I'm like, did my success.

• 56:14Speaker 01

  Did my success put my children or my desire for success put my children in this position? Then I realized that they took from me what I had built, what I had earned, what I had. Sure, I like nice things, but like my wedding ring, you know, my first ring was like such a little small diamond. Like this is over the years that my husband and I, this is like years of like life we've built, memories and you know, my push gift. And so it wasn't just stuff for me. You took memories, you took hard work, you took things of mine that weren't replaceable. And over time, I've learned to heal and accept it.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  And what I tell my little girls is they took things of ours that we, we, uh, we wanted, but they needed it. And, uh, and I'm okay with that now. I'm okay with that. And, um, I just realized that yes, I'm going to probably never, ever say Navila ever again. I think that it's very, very, um, irresponsible and unfortunate for the French government to not come out and put a travel warning because a week after that happened, there was another girl that got robbed. And there's a responsibility that we have to, to tourists, a responsibility if you're

• 57:42Speaker 01

  going to draw in billions of dollars and all these events, like we brought in wellness to Cannes Lion. And so you have a responsibility to protect the people that are bringing in all this incredible stuff into your city. I definitely am more aware of my surrounding and probably would bring security from the U.S. versus relying on security that's there.

• 58:06Emma Grede?

  Yeah.

• 58:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I really do believe that those things that happen are inside jobs, unfortunately. And what it taught us as a family was shit, how strong we are. My daughters, I'm so proud of them. I used to always say to my husband, what adversity will, will our girls ever go through? Living the life that they do. Well, damn, did I speak that into the universe? But my kids showed me how strong they were. I never forget my daughter saying to me, mommy, please calm down. He has a gun pointing at you. And so I, I learned about strength through my daughters.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  And I also learned that as a family, we are resilient.

• 58:53Emma Grede?

  No doubt. I mean, first of all, thank you for sharing that story because I do think it's so important. And I'm so happy that you're all safe and you're all okay. And it was only possessions. And yet I think it set off such a conversation, certainly with somebody like myself, other founders, other women who are at the forefront of their businesses about how much of a forward facing role is safe to take. And in the past, we have spoken so much about, you know, the upside of being at the forefront of our business and then what kind of comes back to you.

• 59:33Emma Grede?

  And usually that's, you know, it's words, it's, uh, it's judgment, it's the media. Um, and this is a very frightening side of it. And so I am really grateful that you would speak so openly and really, um, I'm so happy that your children, despite having gone through something absolutely awful, that you've been able to frame it to them in such a way that they understand what their family is made of and, and who you guys are as people. I think that's really important.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  You have to, like in that moment, you find, you find God through that, that, I guess there's a lot of whys that happened.

• 1:00:09Emma Grede?

  Why?

• 1:00:10Speaker 01

  But I also, also really wholeheartedly believe that in order to get to the level of success that I desire, my ambition, God's going to put me through some real hard times. If I really want to get there, I'm going to have to get through this first. And this was one of them. This was one of them. It's unfortunate that my kids had to go through it, but at the same time, my kids learned a lot about us as a family. Mommy came back into town, went right back into work on Monday. And, um, I just showed them that like you, you know, we can't victimize ourselves to what happened. And also we at dinner would pray for the guys that robbed us. Like we pray for you. I tell my girls like, how sad that you had to stay awake until three in the morning

• 1:00:53Speaker 01

  so that I would fall asleep so that you could take my belonging. I'm actually really sad for you. Like I'm sad for the life that you have, that you have to do that to others. So I pray for them. I pray for them to find a better path because I think that, you know, robbing someone of something that they have is, is obviously not okay. And there was a karma to that. But yeah, you know, we, uh, we're going to get through it. And obviously I'm more cautious now of what I post, when I post. And I think the other part of it that was really painful was first, like the news publication came out, we had, I don't know, like 500,000 dollars a cap, it was something ludicrous. We didn't have anything that they said, like reported.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  We hadn't even talked to anyone. But also how sad of a time we live in where people during such a dark, low time of my family's life can be so judgmental. Like you deserve to get robbed. Actually, how sad is your life? And how miserable are you that you felt empowered to write a comment like that?

• 1:02:03Emma Grede?

  It's wild.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  It's wild.

• 1:02:05Emma Grede?

  It's, you know, I will be really, really honest because I was very attuned, knowing that I wanted you on the show and I followed the brand and your story for so long, as soon as it happened, um, you know, I read about it and I read the stories and I read the comments and I am always horrified at what people will put into writing with their name there and what people want and how they want to be seen in what they say. And so, um, I, I think that you take the right attitude to it, like how terrible for them, but it, it never ceases to amaze me ever. Um, you have given so much incredible information and been so transparent and open about your journey and what you're building. For somebody that's listening right now, what is the one thing that you want them to

• 1:02:50Emma Grede?

  take away from your story?

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Is that nothing has been easy. Nothing. My relationships in my life haven't been easy. Showing up to work every day, I have a thyroid condition. So I actually organically wake up very tired. I don't wake up and I'm like, let's go, you know, I'm like, where's that vitamin D? Where's my, where's my armor thyroid? Like I wake up very tired. So nothing is easy. And we live in this like world today where everything is a highlight reel. Look, my own social media is a highlight reel. But the truth is, nothing has been easy since my childhood. And I think that's what makes it so beautiful. And so if you're willing to accept that nothing that you're going after is going to be easy

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  and you have the willpower and the desire and you know your why and you're passionate, then we can move forward and accept all that's going to come with it. Failure is the admission of success. You're going to face every unhealed part of yourself because that's part of that journey and you're gonna fail, damn it. Nobody talks about how many times you and I have failed through the journey. We failed a lot. It's been ugly, but you gotta just believe in what you're doing. And surround yourself with women that are your anchors, that believe in you, that inspire you. And I would just say that just never stop believing, as, as, as kind of cliche as that sounds, belief is such a powerful, powerful tool.

• 1:04:17Emma Grede?

  Yes, it is. I couldn't agree with you more. What do you still aspire to, to either to be or to become?

• 1:04:23Speaker 01

  Honestly, this sounds so silly to say, but like my inspiration is to have like the Oprah energy where I could walk into a room and few people can just feel my energy without me saying a word because that's how she made me feel.

• 1:04:38Emma Grede?

  Doesn't she have that?

• 1:04:40Speaker 01

  I left her presence, I felt that I can conquer anything and everything. I mean, my husband was actually really afraid. He was like, did you know what I like? Did you guys, did you take shots or something? Are you okay? I mean, I was like, ants. I couldn't even explain what this like adrenaline of like power and belief that she just instilled in me. And so I want to be able to have that kind of aura. That's, that's my dream.

• 1:05:08Emma Grede?

  Oh, I love that.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:10Emma Grede?

  She has it all right. I mean, I don't know what she's doing, but she's doing something.

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:14Emma Grede?

  God knows what she's taking.

• 1:05:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:16Emma Grede?

  Some people are just special. That's it. Some people are just special.

• 1:05:20Speaker 01

  Yeah. But she also has like so much grace and gratitude and has like really like embraced all of her hardships and has said, this is meant for me. And I believe in that too. Like I would say, if I had to repeat my life all over again and get my ass kicked as a kid, like I would do all of that all over again because it's made me who I am today. And that is what I'm most proud of.

• 1:05:43Emma Grede?

  You should be, you should be incredibly proud. I'm going to take you to some rapid fire.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:05:48Emma Grede?

  Okay. What's the one supplement everyone should add to their routine?

• 1:05:51Speaker 01

  Uh, glutathione.

• 1:05:52Emma Grede?

  I'm so glad you said that. I take that. Uh, what's one habit that's non-negotiable for you, no matter how busy you get?

• 1:05:59Speaker 01

  Moment of gratitude.

• 1:06:00Emma Grede?

  If you were packing for vacation and you could only bring three items, what are they going to be?

• 1:06:06Speaker 01

  Cymbiotika, definitely a pair of heels and my Birkin.

• 1:06:10Emma Grede?

  Oh, she's good. She's necky, but she's good. Um, what's a book that changed your life?

• 1:06:16Speaker 01

  Start with yourself.

• 1:06:17Emma Grede?

  Ah.

• 1:06:18Speaker 01

  Seriously, start with yourself and I would say, uh, The Power of Now.

• 1:06:22Emma Grede?

  Oh, I, I love that book.

• 1:06:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:24Emma Grede?

  I really, really love that book. And now that, that's an Oprah one.

• 1:06:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:28Emma Grede?

  She put us all onto that.

• 1:06:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:30Emma Grede?

  Really did. Joanna, thank you so much.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  Thank you for the gift of your time.

• 1:06:34Emma Grede?

  Thank you, my love. That was great. If you're loving this podcast, be sure to click follow on your favorite listening platform. While you're there, give us a review and a five star rating and share an episode you loved with a friend. We'll be so grateful. Aspire with Emma Grede is presented by Odyssey. I'm your host, Emma Grede. Our executive producers are Ashley McShan, Derek Brown, and me. Executive producers from Odyssey are Asha Saluja and Leah Reese Dennis. Producer KK Sublime. Stephen Key is our senior producer. Sound design and engineering by Bill Schultz. Angela Peluso is our booker. Original music by Charles Black. Video production by Phil Sweetech and Carla Stelgardo.

• 1:07:18Emma Grede?

  Social media by Olivia Homan, Catherine Bale. Special thanks to Brittany Smith, Sydney Ford, my teams at The Lead Company and WME. Josefina Francis, Hillary Schaff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchinson Rose, Tim Meekle, Evan Cox, Kurt Courtney, Andrew Steele, Sean Cherry, and Lauren Viera. If you have questions for me, you can DM me at aspirewithemmagreed. Grede is spelled G R E D E. That's aspire, A S P I R E with Emma Grede. Or you can submit a question to me on my website, emmagreed.me.