From Courtroom to Gut Health: Marketing Strategies for Just Thrive Health

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October 9, 2024


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Podcast Chapters

Timestamps of Podcast Topics

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Natural Products Marketer Podcast Interview
Compliance and Marketing in Health Industry
Retail Strategy for Gut Health Products
Marketing Strategies for Natural Products
Podcast Interview Thank You Message

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Headshot of Tina Anderson

Featuring Guest: Tina Anderson

CEO/Co-Founder of Just Thrive

What happens when a career in litigation and pharmaceuticals leads to a groundbreaking natural health venture? Meet Tina Anderson from Just Thrive Health, who takes us on her remarkable journey from the courtroom to the world of gut health and probiotics. Learn about the early hurdles she faced, such as cold-calling health food stores and setting up their e-commerce platform. Discover the pioneering nature of their probiotic strains and the vital support from health food stores that spurred their growth.

In our conversation, Tina dives into the intricacies of compliance in marketing health benefits and how her legal background provided a unique perspective. From ensuring influencer and customer testimonial compliance to the strategic moves like offering free shipping and hassle-free returns, Tina sheds light on the balancing act between robust scientific evidence and strict regulatory boundaries. Gain insights into their efforts to build trust and social proof amidst a challenging landscape.

Explore the significant role of podcasts and customer engagement in Just Thrive’s success. Tina discusses the importance of direct feedback from customers and the ongoing battle against counterfeit products and low-quality supplements. Hear practical marketing strategies for natural products, including education through seminars and informational emails. Wrap up with a heartfelt thank you message from Tina, encouraging you to engage with our podcast across various platforms for more actionable advice on transforming lives through marketing.

Resources

Guest Bio

Tina Anderson is the CEO/Co-Founder of Just Thrive, a gut health supplement company with its flagship product being a market disruptor spore based probiotic, Just Thrive Probiotic & Antioxidant. Tina’s journey into the world of health had a unique start and some unusual turns. She began her career as a lawyer who specialized in settling cases by bringing both sides together, a personal passion of hers. Once her second child arrived, Tina left that high-stress job behind so she could focus on her family. Luckily, she was still able to use her considerable legal skills to point her career in a new direction as the in-house counsel for a family pharmaceutical company. But what Tina saw there made her change direction again. Frustrated by the many abuses in the pharmaceutical industry, Tina turned toward the field of natural health, and found her life’s work. She channeled her energy into learning all she could about disease prevention and good health maintenance. That led her to discover the importance of gut health and how connected and crucial it is for overall health and wellness. To share her discovery with the world, Tina along with her husband created a unique supplement that contains the superior probiotic strains of renowned researcher Dr. Simon Cutting. By promoting gut health and probiotics, Tina shares her passion for wellness, helping others live their best physical and emotional lives.

Full Show Transcript

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah, well, I think our journey is very different than what I think a lot of new entrepreneurs would be.

Tina Smith: 

You know, starting with now, we Welcome to the Natural Products Marketer Podcast. I’m Tina.

Amanda Ballard: 

And I’m Amanda, and we’re here to make marketing easier for natural products businesses, so you can reach more people and change more lives.

Tina Smith: 

Hi there and welcome to the Natural Products Marketer podcast. Today we have a special guest joining us from Just Thrive Health, tina Anderson. Tina, we’re so excited to have you here with us. You founded Just Thrive Health. You have an amazing story and I cannot wait to jump into your story and let everybody know about your amazing products.

Tina Anderson: 

Oh well, thank you so much. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here, so would you like me to jump in and kind of tell my story? I?

Tina Smith: 

read your story on the website and it’s very cool, but I think it would be interesting for you to start there, for the audience to hear what got you into this industry.

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah. So my husband and I were Back in the day. I’m an attorney, I still am an attorney, but I was in litigation for many years and just trying to have more of a work-life balance. I started having children and decided to go into a family pharmaceutical business where I thought it was great because I’m like, oh, I’m delivering life-saving medications to people, making the world a healthier quote-unquote place. And my husband and I were in the industry for a while and just started to see a lot of the abuses in the industry.

Tina Anderson: 

We started seeing the over-prescribing of medications. We started seeing even our own relatives you know who would be on like one of his aunts was on one medication and that medication started causing joint issues. And then that medication to treat the joint issues started causing stomach issues and then that medication started causing skin rashes. And then she was on another medication. It was like she, before you knew it, she was like on a half a dozen medications and never getting any better.

Tina Anderson: 

And we read a lot of Wayne Dyer. We’re huge fans of his he’s passed away since but his message was always like do your life’s work. And we just didn’t feel like we were doing our life’s work. And so we really started delving into the natural health world. It was the way we were already living our lives with our three children, and so we decided to start researching and we learned about the gut. We learned so much about the gut and we learned about some of the issues with probiotics on the market, and so my husband’s naturopathic physician called him into his office one day and said you won’t believe this, but we have the opportunity to purchase these exclusive probiotic strains out of London University. This is a probiotic strain that has never been brought to the retail market, and we were really excited about it, and so we decided to take our life savings and put it into the business and give it a try, and that’s how Just Thrive was born, and it was the most stressful time of my life, but yet the most gratifying.

Tina Smith: 

Yeah, I’d love to hear a little bit about you guys getting started. What was that? Like you said, it’s stressful, but launching a new product and natural products market, like a lot of people think, that’s super easy and it’s not. So I’d love to hear a little bit about that journey and the struggle you went through, and how did you get established?

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah, well, I think our journey is very different than what I think a lot of new entrepreneurs would be starting with now. We launched 10 years ago, and so almost 11 years ago, and at the time we didn’t do the direct-to consumer online where I think a lot of people start. We did have a website that was supposedly an e-commerce website, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t Shopify, it was like I don’t even know what it was, but it was not very functional. Where we started was going into health food stores and just explaining our product, literally cold calling. I mean, I’d be on the phone. We were calling stores and then we got.

Tina Anderson: 

I remember getting our first store and the owner was like this is great, this makes so much sense. Now I understand why a lot of these products probiotics aren’t working, and now I understand why it makes sense and we had science behind the product, and so that was literally the way we started was going to health food stores and we kind of started a nice little business. Then we started to get our e-commerce platform a little bit better, and then we started, you know, then we got onto Amazon and and and we went that route. So, but really we started in the health food stores and that’s that proved to be really great because, you know, there wasn’t a high customer acquisition necessarily. You know, once you got in they really believed in the product and they were selling the product for you and because the product works so well it was, it was just easy to grow in that channel.

Amanda Ballard: 

Yeah, I actually remember when I was working at the health food store at the time, the first time I saw just thrive, hit the, hit the shelves and I was like this is. At the time it was, there was nothing else like it, and even still I would say that there still is nothing like it which is really, really inspiring. I would love to know more of like what brought you from starting with the probiotics that were so revolutionary to then, like now you have more of a full product line. So kind of what what stirred up the, the drive to add more products? What makes those different and unique? And kind of what do you guys have to offer now on top of the probiotics?

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah, we stayed with the probiotic for many years I mean, it wasn’t. It was years before we launched. Well, we, we launched a vitamin K27 product. That was also revolutionary and different because it was the only natural form of K27 that’s out there and it still really is the only natural form. But our big mantra was that we were only going to launch products that were missing and needed in the market, and we really don’t want to be a me too company. I’m a huge believer in, for example, vitamin C, but I’m not going to launch another vitamin C because there’s lots of companies doing a great job with that already.

Tina Anderson: 

So we really did something that was very different, like our prebiotic. We didn’t launch a prebiotic for many years because we felt that a lot of prebiotics on the market actually could make a problem worse when you have gut issues. They actually will feed the beneficial bacteria, but also feed the pathogenic bacteria. We found these particular oligosaccharides that only target the beneficial bacteria. So our whole the way we come to market with something that is very it’s unique and it’s missing in the market and it has research behind it.

Tina Anderson: 

Our IgG was the same. Nobody had brought a bovine derived IgG product to the market at the time we were definitely the first out there and then our Just Calm product, which is a psychobiotic we were the first to bring a psychobiotic to the market. So we really are very thoughtful about what we bring to market, because we’re never going to be a 200 SKU supplement company and you know we don’t want to be. We just want to bring products that are truly high quality, that have research real research behind it not borrowed research, but real research behind it and that are really missing and could impact society.

Tina Smith: 

I love hearing that. We love that you guys are being innovative and looking for what’s missing rather than stacking a whole bunch of products together. I think that’s a unique way of doing things. It’s not what we see often happening with product manufacturers. And what else we think is unique about you guys is when we look at your website. You’ve got a ton of great marketing pieces on there, including the health quiz as a good example. People love quizzes and I’m betting that has really grown your reach and you’re helping you start great relationships with your customers and I took it just so I could see what it was like, and I am a runaway cortisol.

Tina Anderson: 

Me too. Yeah, not anymore, but I used to be yeah.

Tina Smith: 

So tell me a little bit about what got you guys into doing the quiz, whether or not it’s been successful for you, and maybe using use cases like that to help promote your product.

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah, I think the big thing with the quiz is we are really trying to empower our customers. I mean, we know from a marketing perspective that quizzes are really great for customer acquisition. So that’s great because you need to acquire your customer, but we also feel like we’re very, very passionate about empowering people. I mean, like I said, we came from the pharmaceutical industry. We are brought up in this world where you go to the doctor, they tell you what to do. You’re sick, you take a pharmaceutical and there’s no explanation, there’s no why, there’s no understanding the root cause of an issue, and so that’s something that was really passionate to my husband, who’s the co-founder of the business, and I.

Tina Anderson: 

We really wanted to have people be empowered and to take charge of their health. So I think the quiz was one tool. You can’t spend hours with a customer. Unfortunately, online You’re not going to have their attention for that long, but I think the quiz lets them know like, okay, we could really dig into what your issue is and we could figure out what will work the best for you. So, yeah, it has been a really great tool for us.

Amanda Ballard: 

So I’m curious you had said that you were a lawyer. Still are a lawyer. How has that helped you guys, since this industry? There’s so much, I think, gray about what you can say what you can’t say. So we’re actually going to spend a lot of time in our second season of the podcast focusing on regulatory issues, so I would love to just pick your brain on what what that looks like for you and how your experience with with law has helped you guys with a lot of these label claim type issues and how you’re able to utilize using health benefits in your marketing as well.

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah, so it’s funny, I was in litigation so I really had no training in the compliance aspect of things. But what I do know, there’s a couple of things that have helped me being an entrepreneur in this. Being an entrepreneur in the space of being a lawyer is that A I know how to research. You know we were big researchers and you know whatever case I was dealing with, I always had to know how to research and so I really honed in on that skill. The other thing is I know that there’s so many specialties in law and that you need to go defer to the specialist. So we have a compliance attorney, an FDA compliance attorney on retainer that we pay every month to review whatever issues that we need. You know labels and claims and all of that. So that’s super important to us. It’s expensive, but it’s really important to us that we do it right.

Tina Smith: 

So kind of a cost of doing business is making sure that you have that all zipped up and the I’s dotted and the T’s crossed.

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah, you really have to. I mean, you just have to sleep well at night. That’s the thing. There’s plenty of companies out there making outrageous claims. We know that, and they’re still selling, even though they’ve been slapped over and over again. But it’s just not the way that we want to do business. We just I don’t I’m conservative in that respect.

Tina Smith: 

Well, so we saw that there are some testimonials on your site and even like big industry names as well. Is that a way that you guys can talk about some of those health benefits without crossing any of those legal lines?

Tina Anderson: 

Well, no, you still need to have your influencers speak in a compliant language. So that’s part of what we do. When we bring on like an influencer or you know somebody wants to talk about our product, they we need to give them our product, they we need to give them the compliant language. Um, they still need to be compliant also. So and I think that’s what a lot of people kind of get you know, they don’t. I mean, obviously, a brand’s going to get in more trouble if they’re doing it, but you also need to be have your people who are promoting your product be compliant as well.

Amanda Ballard: 

Yeah, that’s super helpful to know Because, yeah, I think that that’s probably one of our biggest questions is how do you, how do you use customer testimonials, since it’s technically not you saying it is someone else said it.

Tina Anderson: 

So before we publish, before we allow a testimonial to be published, we have a process in our office or in our company where it needs to be reviewed to make sure it’s compliant, because you should imagine the customers will be like this cured me of IBS, this cured me of Crohn’s and I’m like, oh my God, we can’t put that on the website. And we didn’t know that right away. We thought, oh well, it’s not our voice exactly what you’re saying, but if you’re putting it on your website, you need to edit it. So there’s a whole process to make sure that the testimonials are in fact compliant. That’s a great question, cause I think a lot of brands I mean. I know we didn’t know that in the beginning.

Tina Smith: 

Yeah, that’s definitely. That’s great information for our community and we’re always trying to talk about different ways that you can promote your product without getting in compliance hot water. So the testimonials is an interesting one we also noticed.

Tina Anderson: 

Sorry, go ahead, go ahead. I said we even have double-blind human clinical trials on our formulation and we have to be very careful to not say Ours is on leaky gut and we could talk about structure function claims, but we can’t talk about any diseases that are associated with the gut permeability. So it’s frustrating because we’ve done all the work and we have all the science, but we have to follow the rules.

Tina Smith: 

Yeah Well, another thing that we were noticing on the website that you guys do is this free shipping, 100% guarantee, zero hassle returns and that you have this 4.9 star rating at the top of your page, and we love seeing that social proof and that you’ve got some real, that you’re going to back your product and have that a hundred percent guarantee and zero hassle returns. That’s helpful for everyone in the market.

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah, no, we. We thought about that long and hard because a lot of times people will say you know, oh, we’ll do a 30-day money-back guarantee or a 60-day money-back guarantee. And we had a friend of mine, from a mastermind that I’m involved in, had said to me you know, just, I would. Just. She’s like, I studied this, we’ve done research on it and when you say a lifetime, you know unlimited return, not unlimited product, but unlimited time, lifetime return, bottom of the bottle guarantee. It improves your customer acquisition and especially when you have a product that works, you know I mean that’s it’s I would be.

Tina Anderson: 

I would never recommend somebody does that for a product that you don’t maybe see a difference or that really isn’t maybe a super strong product. But I mean, nobody would want to bring a product to market that they didn’t believe in. At least I would hope that they didn’t. But you know, with the fact that our product works so effectively for people has been, you know we’ve never even thought about changing it because there haven’t been abuses of it. We have limits on the amount. You know you can’t buy six bottles and then return them all after you’ve used them. You know there are limits on it, but for the most part it hasn’t been abused. It’s been a great tool for acquisition.

Amanda Ballard: 

Yeah, that’s really interesting. I wouldn’t have thought about that just from a sheer customer acquisition standpoint that that guarantee would be so powerful. So that’s awesome. Another thing that we noticed was how important philanthropy is to you guys and that you have this partnership with Vitamin Angels. I think they’re a really awesome organization, but for those that aren’t familiar with them, could you kind of just fill us in on what Vitamin Angels is and why that’s an important partnership for you guys?

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah. So that was really important to us when we launched that we wanted to do something that we gave back to some organization that was really making a difference, especially with, like, natural health and wellness. And so Vitamin Angels goes to countries that where women and children are undernourished and provides them with vitamins, and it’s amazing the impact it’s having, you know, because we know how important these nutrients are to health. We know that here, but in underdeveloped countries where they don’t have, you know, access to these new, you know these vitamins. That’s what vitamin angels does is they go into these countries that have an underdeveloped population and provides these life-changing vitamins and supplements. So we’ve been a part of Vitamin Angels for my gosh, I think, shortly after launch, because that was really really important to us to start giving back right away, even when there really weren’t any profits in the beginning.

Tina Smith: 

So yeah, that’s so interesting that you talk about like the profitability and thinking through can I give at a certain point, even when you’re not bringing money into the business, that’s enough to cover all the expenses. So how did you guys decide like, hey, we’re just going to do this from sacrifice versus waiting until you had money to really give away?

Tina Anderson: 

You know, if there wasn’t really much of a decision, because the decision was made from the beginning. When my husband and I started this company. That’s part of we wanted to like have a company that gave back. We wanted a company that had a really great culture. That was super important to us and it was like fun. We wanted to like really have fun with it and make a difference. So it was just there really wasn’t a big decision. It was like we just wanted to do this from the beginning and it was just kind of part of our like cost basically.

Amanda Ballard: 

I love that. Yeah, definitely not the norm, so that’s really cool. I love that. Yeah, definitely not the norm, so that’s really cool. So another question that we have for you, tina, is you know, you obviously started in the gut health space and that’s still kind of like your main category. It’s not as researched as far as you know other nutrients like vitamin D and magnesium and things like that. So what have you found to be trending in the gut health space? And then what? What do you think we could see next in this space as far as new products and innovations?

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah, I think the big thing is in the gut health space. People have always associated, you know, digestive issues with gut health. So gas and bloating, diarrhea, constipation and, you know, acid reflux, all those types of things. People are like, oh, I’ve got some gut issues going on. But I think the big trend is now seeing that the gut is responsible for all aspects of our health and especially the gut-brain connection.

Tina Anderson: 

I think there’s a lot of talk out there about the gut-brain connection. You know all of our important neurotransmitters like serotonin, gaba, dopamine, are all produced in our gut, where we were always focusing on the brain. So I think there’s a lot. I think that’s a big trend. You’re seeing people talking about brain health when they’re talking about gut health and really I think people are now starting to understand that it’s just it’s our gut that is foundational for our health.

Tina Anderson: 

I mean, we’re not going to be absorbing nutrients if our gut is not absorbed, if our gut is inflamed, it’s our gut’s job to assimilate those nutrients. So I think that the trend now is that people are understanding it, because for so long it’s like oh, I don’t need a probiotic, I don’t need a probiotic, my gut is fine. I go to the bathroom regularly and I think now people are really starting to understand like, even if you do feel like you don’t have any gut issues, you need to be taking a high quality probiotic because you need to be making sure that you are. You know, your immune system is in your gut. All of your neurotransmitters are in your gut. Your hormones are being detoxed and absorbed in your gut, so we need to be focusing on our gut health when you’re talking about any aspect of our overall health.

Tina Smith: 

Yeah, I’ve been noticing the trend of, as I’m getting older myself, that the doctors are talking to me about hormone changes and they’re like okay, you have to have a good probiotic. Even the medical community is starting to steer people in that direction, which is really exciting for me.

Tina Anderson: 

Yes, it is so nice to see that. Yeah, and you’re hearing so little of it out there, but I’m glad that people now are finally starting to talk about it. Especially, every hormone expert you hear about is like you need to take care of your gut. I mean, that is it’s like undisputed in the hormone space we need to be taking care of our gut undisputed in the hormone space, we need to be taking care of our gut.

Amanda Ballard: 

So what advice would you give, particularly to retailers, about how to kind of take hold of that trend and implement that in their business to give them some marketing wins?

Tina Anderson: 

Oh, I think anybody that walks in the store should be leaving with a focus on gut health. I mean, like I said, you could be taking all these other supplements, but if you have a leaky gut, we know that you’re not going to be absorbing the nutrients and toxins are going to be seeping into your bloodstream. So you need to, first and foremost, be taking care of the gut and I just think you feel like, oh, you don’t want to upsell somebody, but it’s like that’s where somebody needs to start is their gut. I’m always so careful about not trying to like sell all these different products to people, even when I’m on podcasts. I’ll say start with the probiotic, like foundationally, we have lots of other products that are very well-researched and really thought out, but start with the probiotic, because I think once they start to have that trust in you and I mean if a retailer were to, you know, hand out any old probiotic, then someone’s not going to come back for it because it doesn’t work. You know when what we’ve noticed with Just Thrive is that they start on Just Thrive and they see the difference, so they come to trust our brand so much. I mean, we have such amazing customers and just raving fans of our product because it works so well.

Tina Anderson: 

I mean, the comment always is like life changing. It’s just it has been life changing because then when you start taking some other supplement that you, you know, somebody has recommended it’s absorbed. It’s absorbing that much better. All the nutrients, the healthy foods you’re eating are being absorbed that much better. So I guess I would recommend that just retailers have every person that walks in should be starting with their gut health, because that’s whatever thing they’re walking in for. You know, maybe you’re taking a multi. They just want to stay healthy. They’re taking a multivitamin. Well, I don’t know why everybody’s so easily persuaded to take a multivitamin, but then they won’t take a probiotic because, like I said this, your gut is really dictating. 80% of your immune systems found in your gut lining. We need to be focusing on our gut when we’re talking about all of our health. I get a little passionate about that, sorry.

Tina Smith: 

No, that’s great. We love the passion and talking about like helping these retailers. I think it’s great Like start with the gut and I know that you guys started in you know natural product stores, so I’m curious are there other things that natural product stores can do to with your brand that can help create some more profitability for them? Longer customer relationships? What did you find worked really well in those stores from the beginning?

Tina Anderson: 

The biggest thing I would say is education. We are so big on education, we have trainings. We would always, I know, in the beginning we would say you could get this discounted product or this discount off of your order if you will agree to trainings, because it was really important for us to do trainings. Most stores are really into trainings anyway, but that has really been a huge. Huge factor is we do expert voice. I know a lot of retailers use that platform, but then we also do like in-person trainings at the, you know, at the smaller level, mid-size level. So that’s really been our focus on. Education has really been hugely helpful and just empowering them to empower their customers.

Amanda Ballard: 

So I’m assuming it’s the stores that say yes to the trainings that do better with you guys and they’re probably thriving in their business as well. Yes absolutely.

Tina Anderson: 

And then also we are on a lot of podcasts, I mean on all different genres, and I think that that has really helped our stores have a lot of success because we are doing so much marketing out there. The podcasts are so beneficial because we’re able to tell the story, we’re able to explain the science and why this is so different and why ours survive and most are not, and so that has really been a huge help to the stores because they’re seeing people now walk into the stores hearing about, you know, hearing about Just Thrive. So that’s also the trainings and then just the other marketing that we’re doing nationally has been super helpful.

Tina Smith: 

Yeah, well, look, this has been an amazing interview, tina. I know it’s going to be so helpful for the retailers and the other manufacturers that we support in the market, and they’re going to be excited to hear your story and all this good marketing advice as well. We usually end our podcast with a few standard questions and we try to call them rapid fire, but it never works out that way.

Tina Anderson: 

I’ll try to be brief.

Tina Smith: 

I’ll try to be brief. Okay, amanda, do you have those pulled up? I do.

Amanda Ballard: 

Yeah, so what do you like to listen, to read? Um, who are you following to kind of keep up with what’s next in the natural products industry?

Tina Anderson: 

Oh gosh, I feel like that all the podcasts I listened to are like ones that I’m going to be on, so I get like I listened to so many different ones. Um, listen to some of the big ones like Peter Attia and Andrew Huberman, and then, as far as the industry, I feel like I get a lot of that just from talking to our customers. Really, that’s where I’m learning mostly from our customers that are online, as well as our customers that are our store customers.

Tina Smith: 

I love that you’re finding out industry information from customers. That is the place that we always tell people to start is talk to the people that you’re serving, because they will give you more information than anyone else.

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah, it’s amazing how much you get from the stores as well as your actual customers, and we are so committed to customer service and we have health coaches on our team, product coaches and these women are amazing. I mean they are everyone’s like. I mean they’re the customer satisfaction rate is so great because I mean we are, they’re a part of our weekly calls. I don’t look at like a lot of companies will be like oh your, our CS team is off on this Island and like, no, like they’re the ones that are talking to the customers. They are on every call with us to try. So we want to, because we want to hear what they have to say. So I would encourage you know companies to really listen to their CS team.

Amanda Ballard: 

So what do you think is the biggest challenge that our industry is going to face over the next three to five years? Is there anything that’s keeping you up at night?

Tina Anderson: 

Yeah, you know I think, well, the counterfeiters is really, um, that keeps me up at night. We’ve had several um counterfeiters put our product on amazon and they were not our product. Um, so that’s a huge product problem we’ve. You know, amazon will handle it, but it takes a long time. There’s a process involved that people are getting the product. So, um, I also, of course, the increased competition with people who are, you know, jumping on the bandwagon my husband had just seen. He saw a, a like, a online course of like how to start a supplement brand in you know whatever 10 days or something like that.

Tina Anderson: 

It was like I mean, yeah, it’s. There’s a lot of junky products out there and I and I think a lot of products that are being funded by investment groups that there’s no passion behind it. We are bootstrapped. We have never taken a penny of investor money Not that there’s anything wrong with companies that do that.

Tina Anderson: 

That’s a way that people could bring good quality products to market. But we answer to ourselves at night, you know, and we don’t have to, and I think there’s so many companies out there that are getting a ton of money and just marketing the you know what out of the products and putting fancy, you know, I would say, like lipstick on a pig. Really they’re taking like a crappy product and putting you know some research behind it, but it’s not real research or it’s borrowed science. And that’s what keeps me up at night is seeing the industry standards go down. When we came into this market, we wanted to elevate the standards because we believe so much in supplements that we started doing double-blind human clinical trials. We elevated the standard and I hate know we’re not and I hate seeing that like some companies are bringing it down. There’s lots of still really good companies doing the right thing, but unfortunately there’s always bad players.

Amanda Ballard: 

Yeah, that’s so. It’s so true. I’ve had so many encounters with just friends and family. And it’s so funny like my husband and I we’ve been in the industry for a decade now and it’s like, why don’t you ask us, like whether or not this is a credible brand? Like and they just buy random crap on Amazon. I’m like this is literal garbage. Like you just wasted $13 on this. And it’s like, just ask like or go to a store, please.

Tina Anderson: 

I know, I know it’s like. Oh, I have the same problem with family members.

Amanda Ballard: 

So what do you think would be? Some low-hanging fruit and I think we already kind of addressed this, you know, starting with the gut but just some low-hanging fruit, quick wins that natural products marketers or retailers, rather, could grab a hold of and start implementing in their business today.

Tina Anderson: 

Gosh some quick wins for them. Again, what has worked for us has been education. So I think doing like seminars I think people are hungry for knowledge about health and wellness, and maybe doing like seminars or some type know some type of educational email, something like that, that could just educate them, cause the more education that you provide your customers, the more they’re going to trust you and come back to you and the more the healthier they’re going to be. And and I think that that would be huge even maybe if they did email newsletters, which I know many of them already do that but those kinds of things, I think would be helpful.

Amanda Ballard: 

And then lastly, Tina, if anyone’s listening that wants to get in touch with you or learn more about your company, how can they do that?

Tina Anderson: 

The easiest thing would be just going to justthrivehealthcom. So obviously you guys have seen the website. We put a lot into the research on our blogs, but you could always reach out to our CS team. Like I said, they’re amazing. You could call them or email them, but going to justthrivehealthcom would probably be the best spot for people to go.

Tina Smith: 

Perfect. Well, I hope that everyone does go visit your website. It’s got a lot of marketing tactics that we support and think that other people should be deploying on their websites. If you’ve got a good product or you have a fabulous store, take a look at this website and get some great ideas to put on your own website. It’s there and it sounds great. You guys are very supportive of the local retailers and I know that they’ll be excited to get in touch with your team so that they can research your brand and find out even more about gut health.

Tina Anderson: 

Well, thank you so much for the opportunity. I really appreciate it and just love to share our story.

Amanda Ballard: 

Thanks so much for listening to the Natural Products Marketer podcast. We hope you found this episode to be super helpful. Make sure you check out the show notes for any of those valuable resources that we mentioned on today’s episode.

Tina Smith: 

And, before you go, we would love for you to give us a review. Follow, like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you’re listening today, and make sure you join us for our next episode, where we give you more marketing tips so that you can reach more people and change more lives.