Turning Health & Wellness into a Thriving Business | Gina Paulhus

What if a single decision could change the course of your business? In this episode of Spark and Ignite Your Marketing, host Beverly Cornell sits down with Gina Paulus, the CEO of Genuine Essiac, to discuss how she turned her passion for holistic health into a thriving business. From humble beginnings in personal training to building a viral wellness brand, Gina shares her journey of resilience, smart marketing, and customer care that sets her business apart. Tune in to hear how she overcame challenges, navigated major business shifts, and awakened her brand magic.

Three Key Topics Discussed:

1. The Evolution of Genuine Essiac & The Power of Holistic Healing: Gina shares how her journey from personal training to selling Essiac tea began and how a simple herbal remedy with a rich history became the foundation of her business. She dives into the origins of Essiac tea, its medicinal benefits, and how staying true to the original formula sets her company apart.
2. The Viral TikTok Moment That Changed Everything: A single TikTok post skyrocketed Gina’s business, proving the power of persistence and digital marketing. She discusses the impact of that moment, how she scaled her operations afterward, and the importance of showing up consistently—even when success seems distant.
3. Lessons in Entrepreneurship: Overcoming Setbacks & Scaling Smartly: Gina candidly shares the biggest mistakes she’s made and the lessons that helped her refine her business strategy. She emphasizes the importance of automation, customer connection, and trusting the process.

Follow Gina:
Genuine Essiac | Facebook
Genuine Essiac | Instagram
Genuine Essiac | TikTok

Transcript

Beverly: 0:09

Did you know that over 70 percent of people are turning to natural remedies to support their health and wellness with rising healthcare costs and a growing interest in holistic healing. More people are exploring herbal solutions like S E F T. Welcome to another magical episode of the spark and ignite your marketing podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Cornell. And today we have a super fun guest who's keeping an ancient remedy alive while navigating the twists and turns of running a small business. Joining us today is Gina Paulus, the CEO of Genuine Essiac, a company dedicated to making high quality Essiac tea available at an affordable price, while upholding a legacy of research and healing. Gina, welcome to the show.

Gina: 0:54

Thanks so much for having me. I've really been looking forward to this.

Beverly: 0:57

So I know that Essiac is only one element of your entrepreneurial journey that you have a bigger umbrella of wellness. So talk about like how the business started and how it's evolved over time.

Gina: 1:10

It truly is an organic growth that we really experience. So way back in 2004, I was working at a gym, a fitness gym, and I noticed that we were charging the clients 70 and 80 dollars a session and I was only getting paid 11. And I did some quick math and realized, I don't think this is going to work for my long term income, but I love the job and I decided to just give it a try. I was young. I didn't have a lot to lose with it. So I opened up a company called Home Bodies and Home Fitness Training and I started going to client's homes. I also figured, you know what the gym has a lot of 10, 20 trainers, but at someone's house, I can be the only trainer. So it's going to set me apart. So that's how things got started. And then from there we, so when I say we, my husband now, who was my boyfriend at the time, he had this product called essiac tea, he mixed it. He helped ship it. He did not really do the marketing or anything like that, but he came up to me one day, we were at the kitchen table, just hanging out and he said, Gina, I know that you've taught yourself how to build a website and how to open a company. What do you think about selling this herbal tea? And this was 2005, so not too much further down the road. And I had some free time. I'm like, yeah, sure. Let's do it through a website online. And really the rest is history.

Beverly: 2:23

So I love how it's holistic, but it's also organically developed the business. Like it just naturally happened for you. What did you always want to be an entrepreneur? Or was this something that just based on the situation of 11 an hour and I need to take control of my life in this way.

Gina: 2:41

Oh, it actually sounds even worse. I was earning six 25 an hour when I worked at the front desk. It's like you look at that and you think this is barely going to buy my groceries for the week. But yeah, so in terms of the entrepreneurship, I actually am the first person in my entire family who became an entrepreneur or even thought about it really. And I will tell you this much. I was warned not to do it. Both of my parents were quite skeptical of it and didn't think it would work. I understand they had some fear in regards to it. It was something new to them. They wanted me to be secure and stable. But I just had this feeling in me. I didn't want to go somewhere and work nine to five. I didn't want to be answering to somebody else's bell all day long. It was more like, Hey, let's try this. It wasn't ever I'm going to take out a 500, 000 loan and start this business. It really started where I kept my job at the YMCA. I did my 20 hours a week there. And then I built on my own. I'm more of like a baby steps type person. I like to take things slow. So I don't feel overwhelmed or anxious.

Beverly: 3:39

Most entrepreneurs. that I know, there's not a lot of baby steps. I feel it thrusts you into situations. You don't have a lot of a treasure. Like I got to figure this out or this needs to get taken care of or whatever. There's a lot of things happening. So talk a little bit about SCFT, what it is, why it's so unique and the story behind that particular product in this holistic wellness space.

Gina: 4:02

Yeah, so essiac tea is an amazing herbal tea. It is so much more than just a tea that you might drink for pleasure. I've got my cup here. You think about tea and it's okay, I'm going to sip my cup of tea and that's going to be warm and it's going to taste good. Essiac really isn't any of that. I'm not saying it is bad, but it's really more of a medicinal product and what it's going to do is it's going to help purify your organs from the inside out. It's going to help eliminate toxins from your body to really allow your body to do what nature intended. Our body is designed to heal. If you cut your Arm by accident, your arm's going to heal. It's going to scab and it's going to get better. Your body knows how to do it, but the things in our environment get in the way and the eight herbs in this tea help your body to return to its pristine state, just as nature intended.

Beverly: 4:49

What are the things,

Gina: 4:50

What are the eight? This is where my husband could rabble it up. My husband, as I mentioned, owns a business with me too, but let me give it a shot. It's burdock root, blessed thistle, kelp, red clover. Sheep sorrel, slippery elmbark, Turkish rhubarb root. And watercress. I got all eight.

Beverly: 5:10

My mom was a holistic nurse. So she had the Eastern medicine and the Western medicine. Like she'd always, I always like joke with her. She was like a witch doctor. If I like hurt myself or had some ailment, she was mixing up some, either essential oil or homeopathic or something for me to have. And then if that didn't work, we would maybe go to more traditional medicine. Because there's a place I think for that, but she was always like, let's try this first because what the earth gave us is like the best stuff. So I feel like that is very much the case. Let's try this thing. To this day, if I burn my finger, it's lavender oil, right away. And it's it stops it almost immediately. It's amazing. I believe in the power of some of that. That's great. I've heard, I heard of a couple of those like red clover and slippery elm and obviously watercress. I've heard some of them I have not heard of. How did you come up with this idea? Particular combination and why is it so powerful?

Gina: 6:00

Yeah. So I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. So this was developed by a nurse that was working in Canada. Or I shouldn't say, let me backtrack. So the nurse from Canada is the one that first started bringing it into widespread use, but it actually first became used by the Ojibwa Indians or the Ojibwa tribe from Canada. And this is back in the late 1800s that it was reported that they were using it. And this woman, Rene Caisse, who was the Canadian nurse, was working at a hospital and she had a patient that had breast cancer and that patient had actually healed. Now, she told Rene Caisse that, hey, I use this stuff called SCRT and was able to connect Rene Caisse to the Ojibwa Medicine Man. And at that point, because Rene Caisse was in the medical field, she was able to bring that out to more people. And that's really how it started. So the Ojibwa are the ones that developed the formula. And they also were known to use all the ingredients in anything. Like they didn't throw anything away. So one of the unique things about our formula and about our tea is that it is made with powdered herbs. That way you can actually stir. the tea and you drink the herbs because they're pulverized so fine, almost like orange juice pulp, where you can just go ahead and drink it. So that way you're getting the fiber and you're getting additional phytochemicals that you might not be able to get if you strained out the herbs. So if you look on the marketplace, there are other people selling Essiac. However, a lot of them have compromised over the years. They've added things to make it taste better. They've maybe taken out a bitter herb so that it's not as bitter. They do different things like that to make it more palatable for the average person. But unfortunately with that, they're throwing some of the results down the tube as well.

Beverly: 7:38

So if you had to describe the flavor, how would it, what does it taste like?

Gina: 7:42

I will admit when I first started drinking it, I wasn't the healthiest person. I was young. I did think it was pretty bitter. What I chose to do is add some orange juice to it, which is perfectly allowed. But to give you like an example, I would say like a bitter type of green tea, or maybe, if you just threw grass clippings and boiled it. Yeah, and it's definitely like some people love it and I truly love it now. I actually crave it if I've been on vacation and I haven't used it. Interesting. But it's like a lot of things that can be an acquired taste.

Beverly: 8:13

Fair, totally fair. There's a lot of herbal remedies. And you talk a little bit about compromising the actual health benefits. Is there something that you don't like about the industry and how are you different?

Gina: 8:24

Oh I could go on and on. I will say this number one I have an issue with companies who will take people's money and they will not stand behind what they're saying the product will do. Obviously, there's no guarantees in life. However, we can at least financially guarantee that nobody will pay for our product if it doesn't help them. One of the reasons this is important to us is my husband had a twin brother who unfortunately had ALS and his brother had bought so many things, we spent so much money, went into debt, just trying to help them out and none of it worked. And. Brent is his name. He decided to ask us, he said, look, if you guys want to sell this, I just want you to guarantee that it will improve their health or they get their money back and we're like, you know what? That's a great idea. So that's what we started to do. And this is over 20 years ago now. And. We maybe do, but so we probably send out right now. It's probably eight to 900 boxes of tea. Now, when I say a box of tea, that's between two months and a year of supply. So we're selling a lot of this stuff, right? And maybe two refunds are asked a week, maybe one. It's really not very much. So it's important to me that we stand behind our product. And it's also important to me that we don't give customers faults. Suggestions. For example, if you go to buy, say fish oil and you buy the supplement, It might say take one capsule. If you go into the research, it's probably going to say you need four to six capsules to have that effect that you're looking for. But the supplement company doesn't want you to think, Oh, I have to take six of these. That's like too much. I can't do that. Or it's too expensive or whatever else. So they water it down and we refuse to water it down, which is why we make sure that they know the reality of it is if you want to improve your health, you have to drink this three times a day. It's only three ounces. It's not that much, but if you don't drink your three ounces, three times a day, you're not going to expect a change. And a lot of companies tell you, you only have to do it once or twice a day. Again, for the convenience. But to us, we want our customers to get well, we don't really care about their convenience. It's not like it's that inconvenient, but like it's a commitment obviously.

Beverly: 10:25

So is it three times a day because it's like after a meal or with them with meal

Gina: 10:29

it's empty stomach. Okay. First of all, now it doesn't mean like you can't eat. What that means is you have to wait two hours after your last meal to have your tea. So the fiber in the product is like a scrub brush for your intestine. It's going through there. And if you're trying to scrub and there's stuff everywhere, you can't really scrub because there's too much going on. So you've got to wait until your body's in that state to receive that cleanse.

Beverly: 10:51

I like it. So every business owner has some challenges and roadblocks, right? Tell me about some of the hardest moments of being a business owner. What did that look like for you and how did you navigate it and turn it into a win for yourself?

Gina: 11:03

Yeah. So there was one particular year that stands out to me and it was 2015. There were lots of things going on at the time. As always, there's shifts in different regulations and different whoever's, president at the time, different things like that. We have issues with advertising rules changing with what is Google doing? Like it's just an on constant. So for whatever reason, that particular year, everything just converged. My personal training was slowing down. The tea business was really slowing down. Now with the tea business, we had three people, including myself, and I'm starting to think do we have to let one of them go? My husband started looking for jobs at the gas station. It was scary. And I said, okay, I go, this has been pretty easy relatively for me for the first 15 years. That does not mean I can just do what I've always done. And it's always going to work.

Beverly: 11:49

Yeah.

Gina: 11:50

So I wasn't doing a lot with automation. And I did listen to one of your recent episodes about the automation. That was really good. But I didn't do a lot with it. And of course, 2015, it wasn't like it was as big as it is now. So I thought, all right, I have a list of customers. I have lists. People have ordered. What I'm going to do is look up six months ago, whoever ordered. Now we tell our customers, try to order a six month supply. If you can, that way you don't run out and have a lapse and all of that stuff. So I started by hand emailing. Every customer who bought six months ago, and I did that every week. I sat down on a Monday and did that. And I thought, all right, I know there's like systems for this. I don't really have the money to buy them. And let me just see if this does anything. And it did. It did a lot, actually. And also, furthermore, it's like an email from a person. It wasn't like a marketing email.

Beverly: 12:36

Great.

Gina: 12:36

So it was a lot of work, but it re inspired me of what else can I do different that I haven't already been doing? And by the end of that year, everything had changed. Like we decided not to go on a trip that year. We just didn't want to spend too much money. And by the end of the year, I had completely reset things and we were back in the growth phase again.

Beverly: 12:53

You have since automated that particular process. We call that like a loss lead, if they haven't called back and whatever.

Gina: 12:57

Oh my gosh, of course. But it's like it has to start somewhere, right? It started with me just coming up with it. Then I realized, oh, there's actually like apps for this.

Beverly: 13:06

How did you know it worked? When was the moment? Was it just orders coming in? Like one, One minute email is a sale essentially.

Gina: 13:13

Literally it took three seconds. Copy paste. And yeah, you're right. But the ROI helped for sure. We started seeing more orders come in, but even more than that, I think what it was is like the personal dialogue I was having with my customers. They're writing back, telling me their struggles, telling me their successes. And I think that it helped them bond with me and it helped them. Realize like somebody actually cares on the other end. And I was a little worried about bothering them at the same time. But then when I got the feedback, I'm like, okay, for every one person that feels bothered by this, there's 99 people that appreciate it.

Beverly: 13:42

People want to do business with humans, not with a brand or a logo. They want to know that there's a connection there for sure. So that makes complete sense from a marketing perspective. That connection with you is magic. That kind of leads me right to our season's big question, which is how did you awaken your brand magic? Was there a moment when you knew you were like in your lane? Was there a moment or a process that you went through that brought about your exact magic as a brand?

Gina: 14:13

To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure the magic really was like in full mode until a couple of years ago, I would say. Maybe a little bit longer, like five years ago. What ended up happening is we had a website that was a little bit clunky. We took a leap and actually, interestingly enough, we had to do this because at the time, once again, regulations about Google AdWords in particular. So we were doing Google ads going well, all of a sudden they said, you guys can't make a claim, which we didn't really do that, but they said, you can't have a guarantee. If you guarantee your product and give your customers money back, you cannot advertise. And I thought that makes no sense at all. I'm literally trying to help my customer and you're saying I can't do that. And I decided I wanted to make a Shopify site that was what I'd call stripped down, meaning that it didn't have anything, no testimonials, which really killed me to not be able to put testimonials on there. No guarantee. It was literally the smallest website you could have, but what was good about it was I could advertise with that. So we created that site and then what ended up happening was over time, because the apps were a little bit more modern and the experience for the customer was better. They could check out in a place that was familiar to them. That site started growing and growing. And one thing that really helped us was we opened up an affiliate program with the Shopify site. I had an affiliate program before, but it just wasn't as robust. And as painful as it was to have the two sites and like the two customer base, it was like a lot, it was a lot of work. Two sets of newsletter lists. It was so much, but ultimately it led us to sunset the original site and stick with the Shopify one. And at that point, Coincidentally too, we ended up going viral on TikTok. And at that point I was able to onboard virtual assistants, office assistants, more staff. And it really freed me up to focus on what I do best, which is content creation and marketing.

Beverly: 16:03

So talk about your viral moment. What was that like? What happened?

Gina: 16:06

That was so cool. Of all things, I was at my grandmother's, she had dementia and I was responsible to help her out certain nights of the week. So I'm over there helping her out. She's sleeping half the time, I'm on my phone doing some work while she's asleep. I looked down and there's order. Like every three minutes, there's an order. That was unusual. What's going on? Then I thought, did we get hacked? That was where my mind went. And so then I'm like, huh? And then I go, geez, and I'm thinking and thinking, couldn't figure it out. And then after a few hours I go, oh my gosh, I posted on TikTok yesterday. We had started a TikTok. This is 2021. We started a TikTok. We didn't really do that good with it. It wasn't something that I was really super into, but I thought, you know what? Don't give up on it. Maybe it just, You have to keep trying. So I remember putting a video. Now, this video is three minutes long and I knew on TikTok at the time, they said 15 seconds is all you should do. And I'm like I don't have a 15 second video. Something's better than nothing. I'm just going to put this up. It was a test on one of a woman who had healed from a brain tumor. Great testimonial. And I had tried to put an up while the upload failed when I tried to do it the first time. And then I thought to myself, Gina, what are you doing? You have Facebook, you have Instagram. Like, why are you putting yourself through this? What's the point? And I thought about that. And then I said, you know what? I'm just going to click reupload one more time, reupload one more time. Put the phone down, go to sleep, forget about it. At a certain point that next day, I said, I'm gonna check TikTok. And it had over 200, 000 views in about 12 hours. Which for us, was like, crazy. I had never had more than a thousand views anywhere. Yeah. And I was literally like my whole body felt adrenaline, but I also felt guilty because I hadn't responded. There were like a thousand comments I hadn't answered. And we really pride ourselves on answering all the comments for everything pretty quickly. So I was like, Oh no. And I'm just, no one else knew how to do it. I had to do it myself. But that moment I felt like a weight lift off of me because I felt like we are never again going to struggle. We are going to have. The right people in front of us. And I just had that faith that like, that was it. It wasn't going back from there.

Beverly: 18:07

Pretty powerful moment. I think those viral moments happen, they're very organic. If you're consistent, persistent, you can be random. There's just no magic formula for that. But I think what's so powerful about what you're saying to me, what you're saying and what I'm hearing is that it confirmed for you that you were in the right place. This is what we're supposed to be doing. This is like the universe telling us it's going to be fine, which is great.

Gina: 18:29

We watch Shark Tank together a lot. And I thought, This person saying that they sell a million dollars of something. And I'm like, how on earth can we get there? I couldn't understand what it would take. And I thought that's okay. I don't need to be like that. I can just do my thing, the slow boat to it. It doesn't have to be that I'm as big, but like I did deep down want to be, but I just didn't know how, but I kept showing up and I kept trying things that were new to me. And I think that's what helped me the most.

Beverly: 18:57

Showing up consistent and persistent. Yep. That means just showing up, trying to do things. A handwritten email, whatever works. You have to think like that as an entrepreneur, you have to keep thinking about it. One of our core values is dynamic because it's like in marketing, you can never like rest on your laurels. Like you can't just algorithms change, tools change. Some of the psychology is the same, but it's just such an ever changing space. You cannot rest on it. You have to keep thinking about Testing and trying. There is like a constant process of it, which often results, unfortunately, in many entrepreneurs feeling very overwhelmed with marketing because there is so much to it. If you had to talk about your biggest marketing mistake or business mistake. What have you done and how did it help you grow?

Gina: 19:41

Let's go back to Google ads for a moment, by the way, we do not use Google ads right now, not because of this, but there was a point and this was very early in my business where I had created some Google ads and. I didn't know that there was a way to cap the budget. Oh, I know. So it was really bad. I will say. So I'm like going on, Oh, we're getting busier. This is good. So when I logged back onto it, I don't know, three, four months later, I had been on it, but I hadn't dug into the financials of it. I had spent 80, 000 on ads. And again, we were getting orders. Like it was, Working but when I looked at my ROI, it was not necessarily an acceptable number. So wasn't the end of the world. We did gain customers from it. That being said though, I did tell my husband, I didn't want to, but I'm like. Honey, I did this and he was cool about it. He just goes, all right what are we going to do? What happened? Hopefully it was worth it. Kind of thing really taught me a lesson of like, whenever I now create advertising campaigns, the first thing I do is look at when do I want this to end? What's my top? And I feel like the tools are better now. They're a little bit more obvious. But yeah, that was shocking when I saw that

Beverly: 20:49

we had a situation with a client where for months and months, the average spend was like, I don't know, 1000 or something and one month, like in two days, it spent 10, 000. And we saw this, what alerted us was we had an alert on our Google Analytics set up that if there's like a spike in traffic to like, let us know, email us or text us. But alerted us that there was a lot of traffic coming to the website. We're like, what is going on? And we had not extended the budget in any way, shape or form in that one day period. It was like a Google error and we've had to fight it to get, we got a significant portion back, but there's still a couple thousand dollars that is still in question. But. They're like you did get the traffic. No, but that's not what we wanted. We wanted to spend 1, 000. So you have to really be careful with the budgets. There's no question. Because even then, like in Google and Facebook and some of those platforms don't have great customer service. So that is a challenge all of itself is trying to get to the right people and get your situation resolved. But 80, 000, I thought 10, 000 was a lot. I can't imagine 80, 000. I would have had a heart attack. I think Gina, your husband's very understanding.

Gina: 21:58

I know. And I was tipped for tack. Cause there were some stuff that went on in the past and I think, we had both made mistakes along the way. And at the time I didn't have a bookkeeper, like that speaks to have a bookkeeper. Cause I feel like my bookkeeper would have been like, what is this? What are you doing? Which, is a whole other subject, but saying like check conferences of checking you as helpful. Cause when you're the entrepreneur doing all the roles, it's easy to get overwhelmed. It's hard to check yourself and remember which things to check.

Beverly: 22:24

Yeah, I think the bookkeeper was the first thing I hired because I was so nervous about the IRS coming after me. That was what I was more nervous about. So I was like, I don't want anything wrong. Please fix this. Make sure it's good. Plus it's just a lot of detail, which for a creative soul is soul sucking, essentially. So I was like, please just make it magical and make it happen for me. A lot of our listeners are solopreneurs. And it can be very lonely. But I imagine there's a whole different level of challenges working with your partner in life as well as partner in business. How have you guys navigated that?

Gina: 22:59

So interestingly enough, he has let me take Leadership role in it. He's not so much a behind the scenes guy. So his job in the very beginning was pretty much everything that wasn't marketing or website stuff or email. He doesn't like typing either. But he did, mixing the verbs. He did the phone, he did, putting the product into boxes, packaging, and shipping it out with that kind of stuff. Luckily, now we have people to do all of those things for us. But he really did like more the physical stuff and I would run my thoughts by him, but he wouldn't try to take over, which I feel like helped because I think for someone like me, I'm more of a person who prefers working by myself. I now have a company of 37, so I'm not working by myself. But I am still in charge and that's the role I like. And he has amazing ideas. He's more of a type B er and I'm more the type A er, so I think we have to make sure we're both in a good head space to listen to each other. Because my tendency is to say that's not going to work because this, and this, and his thought is more let's have all these ideas, but I don't really know how to get any of them done. And that can feel stressful as a type a, because you want to like, have a plan for all the ideas.

Beverly: 24:02

Yeah.

Gina: 24:03

We've learned how to communicate better in the sense that we've learned, like when is not a good time to ask each other or talk to each other about certain things, just because there's like too much going on. And I think I've done a better job more recently listening to him and giving him that validation of yeah, your idea is great and not just like blowing past it. And I think he's done a little bit of a better job of trusting my decisions of if I'm saying we shouldn't be spending this much on TikTok ads right now, like there's a reason that I thought that through. I feel like it's evolved. It takes time, but I feel like for us, it's grown in a positive way over time.

Beverly: 25:30

That's lovely. I love that. So I have a magic hat. It's nice and sparkly. You see the nice sparkles, purple and sparkly. And inside of here are some questions. There's a lot of them. There's 30 or 40 questions. And it's like a lightning round, but it's modified to a magic hat round. So the first question I'm just stirring up a little bit here is what's been your most unexpected, but serendipitous moment in business?

Gina: 25:54

Unexpected, but serendipitous. I'll tell you this one. So our manager right now, he, showed up at our doorstep in 2006 and he needed some money and it just so happened that we needed some help. So my husband gave him some cash and just was like, here, put these bags of tea in a box. And he has come to our residence, which is where we work every day since then. And It's it's almost his 20 years anniversary and it just started with someone who needed some extra pocket change. Oh, I love that.

Beverly: 26:26

That's beautiful. You had a need and he had a need and it just worked out. That's so great. If you could wave a magic wand and solve one current challenge for your business, what would it be?

Gina: 26:36

Oh, one current challenge. I'm gonna say all the little oddball requests we've got great systems in place for normal things, but what I do is any email that can't be answered by my staff, any phone requests that we can't just plug and play with it I'd like to find a way to decrease what we call the oddballs, meaning 5% of your orders take 95% of your time.

Beverly: 27:01

That helps for sure. What is the worst advice you've ever received?

Gina: 27:06

Okay. You're gonna appreciate this as a marketing person. This goes back to my husband. He is a sucker for the reach out, like the random reach out. Oh, I can do this for your business. Oh, I can do that. And he's constantly sending me like spam things that are horrible. Most of the time I'm pretty good about fending it off, but once in a while I fall for it too. And oh, this person promised us he could get us. I don't even remember what the promise was, but he basically said, you guys aren't posting enough. You got to post more. So I let him take control of my marketing, including the creation of my marketing. And he started posting complete garbage twice a day. It was very expensive. It literally got like zero to one likes And it was like, we were sucked into it. There was a contract. I ended up untangling myself and I actually managed to get my money back. But the whole thing took so much time. He wanted all these assets we were supposed to send him and he didn't even end up using them. I think he thought it was this will be easy. I'll just put a little cup of tea on a picture and that will be a lot. We'll do. And what he didn't count on was the fact that my stuff was actually doing better than his was that being said, I broke off with him. That was that, however, he did inspire me to get a little bit more serious about posting more. And I did realize that to do that, I needed to get an assistant because I did not have the time. So I will say it was a blessing in disguise in the end.

Beverly: 28:20

Yeah I think that they're going to you to something different. All of my clients, sell a product or a service and invariably Yelp salespeople are like the most swarmy. Persistent, horrible salespeople. And so many of them fall for it. I'm like, stop, do not spend money on that. But they are just really persistent people. Don't do it though. If you're listening listeners please don't do it. Unless you're like a restaurant or something. What has been the hardest part about being an entrepreneur?

Gina: 28:48

Oh, for sure. The hardest part has been managing business to home life stuff. Like when do I work? When do I not work? How much is enough work? Definitely like setting boundaries around my schedule, my personal way. I like to work. to it is I like to have a certain cutoff time at night when I'm going to stop my work. Even if I didn't finish what I wanted to, it's that's it. And then I don't work on weekends for the most part once in a great while I need to, but but there was a point in time when I was working seven days a week and I don't think that was a sustainable place to be.

Beverly: 29:21

It's so hard. It's so hard to find balance, especially working from home. It's it just oozes into every corner of your life. What's a surprising way your personal values show up in your business?

Gina: 29:32

I will say that one of my core values is caring. And it's funny because I'm not going to say I'm not a caring person, but that wouldn't be the first word that would come to mind with me, but when I asked several of my friends, they said, the number one thing is that you care. And I was like, you know what? I actually think you're right about that. And I just didn't think of it that way. So it is interesting when you ask that question. Other people, what they think of you, like what they will say is very enlightening. And that might be a fun exercise for people to try out. But we truly do. We call it, we pride ourselves in old fashioned customer service. So we do not use AI for anything. We do not do canned emails, that kind of stuff. What we do is we reach out to each and every customer, whether it's us or our staff personally, and we can't always do it instantly, but we feel that's the way we want to treat people, especially if they're here for a health concern. Like you wouldn't go to a doctor and have them give you an AI response. That's not correct. And hopefully that doesn't happen anywhere.

Beverly: 30:27

It takes away the entire human side of that. I think there's certain things that can be automated that are just task focused, but when you have the human interaction, I feel like that's it's an opportunity for dissatisfaction to occur because it's not a cookie cutter world. Like you said, 5 percent of those people that's not going to be the appropriate response for them. And that's not a feeling you want them to have. Last question. What was the moment you realized your business was successful?

Gina: 30:49

For me, Honestly, and I know this isn't like a classic response, but I just always wanted my business to simply pay the bills. That was all I really cared about. Now that being said, that isn't the easiest thing either. But I was like, you know what, every year I want the end of my bank account to have more money in it than I had at the beginning. And if it's, I'm, 5, 000, I was able to save this year. The next year, maybe it's 8, 000. That was great. That was a win for me. And so I would say I did feel successful right away, but when I felt like I had said, ah, that sigh moment of ah, I've made it, like things are good. And they're, Here to stay was that viral point. And ever since that moment of TikTok, we've gone viral several more times. One of our videos did get over 6 million views.

Beverly: 31:35

Wow.

Gina: 31:35

And at a certain point I started moving it away from I need to earn money to I want to help the world as my main thought. Like I wasn't. It's not that neither of those thoughts were there. They were both always there. But I feel like the ratio switch to where making a difference became my main driver more than anything else. And especially as you get older, right? Like you start thinking more about what is the impact you're making on the world.

Beverly: 31:59

I think I saw you on podcast match or something. I think that was the part of you that I wanted to talk to you. That was the part that was intriguing to me was your care and your vision in that, like you wanted to help people. And those are the kinds of people I want to know and surround myself with. And because I want to impact the world too. I want to help businesses who are in the wellness, kindness, joy space. Magnify their impact. So there's more wellness, kindness and joy because the world always needs more of that good stuff. So I love that so much for you because when you said it, I was like, I think that's exactly why I reached out to her initially as a guest was because of that vision that you had. And I think that is so incredibly powerful. People who want to just do good in the world is we need more of the do gooders, the feel gooders, the people who make a positive impact in the world. So I actually have a magic wand, I have a magic hat and a magic wand, and I'm going to wave the wand. It actually helps us time travel. And we're going to go back to the 18 year old Gina, who just graduated from high school, and we're going to give her some advice. What advice will we give Gina?

Gina: 33:07

Yes, 18 year old Gina needs to hear that her dreams are valid, her dreams matter, and they will manifest into a life that is more beautiful than she could ever imagine.

Beverly: 33:21

What would Gina say about present day Gina.

Gina: 33:25

18 year old Gina would look up in awe at present day Gina and ask how she can be more like her and ask her if she could be her mentor.

Beverly: 33:34

That's cool. That's such a, like a cool moment of you didn't even know this was possible. And now that it's possible, how do I get to that possibility? It's such a, an interesting moment from a perspective of growth, I think, as a human. Going to wave the wand and we're going to go into the future, like far into the future, decades and decades, and we're going to go to a celebration of your life. What are people going to say your impact and legacy was?

Gina: 33:58

So far into the future, they're going to say that Gina showed up. Gina was persistent in spite of all odds. And Gina didn't have an easy life, but she. Made the most of each relationship, each opportunity that she had, she put all of herself into everything that she did and she has no regrets because of that.

Beverly: 34:19

That's lovely. Okay. I'm going to take us back into present time. And I would love for you to give our listeners one piece of advice for them to put into action today, this week, to awaken their brand magic or to lean into their brand magic more.

Gina: 34:35

What I suggest is to sketch out, whether it be a drawing or a list of notes, sketch out what your ideal customer is what they go through in their day, what are their pain points, what gives them pleasure and joy. And I want you to put yourself in their shoes. And then I want you to think about what do they need and want to hear from you and how can you make their life better with your messaging.

Beverly: 35:02

It's all about the customer and how you serve them, for sure. Oh, before we wrap up, Gina, please share with our listeners where they can learn more about you and your businesses.

Gina: 35:12

Yes the best places to start would definitely be our website. So our first one that we are, focused the most on right now is the GenuineEssiac. com. And that one We will spell it for you guys. It is G E N U I N E and then E S I A C, which by the way, Essiac is Nurse Rene Caisse name spelled backwards, if anyone's curious as to why I spelled that. Yeah so that website is perfect. And then I do offer pregnancy and postpartum corrective exercise personal training. And I do that with myself as well as my staff. And you can visit homeexercisecoach. com for that one. And then lastly I do also offer adult gymnastics retreats and camps. I did adult gymnastics up until almost age 40, which is a fun fact about me. And as you can imagine, like that's a little bit unusual. But that being said, there's more and more adults doing the sport these days. And I'm. It's more of a volunteer role that I put in, but I want to help grow that sport and the opportunities that you can get with the Adult Gymnastics. You can visit adult gymnastics. com if that speaks to you at all.

Beverly: 36:18

Thank you so much, Gina. This has been really fun. So many services and things that kind of all go together. And I love it when an entrepreneur finds the way to make a business about the things that they love, whether it's their passion, health, wellness, and those spaces. And I hope our listeners found this episode to be as enlightening and inspiring as I did. Stay tuned for more episodes of the Spark and Ignite Your marketing podcast, but until then keep sparking and igniting.