ECommerce in Health and Wellness with JustThrive’s Tina Anderson

 

No Guts No Glory.

Tina Anderson is the founder of JustThrive. 

Tina Anderson created a probiotic to increase gut health and help others stay healthy. A healthy gut means a healthy mind, and a clearer purpose. These probiotics and antioxidants are natural and better than any other competitors out there.

Learn more about improving your health with JustThrive Probiotics and Antioxidants by listening to this episode of The Thoughtful Entrepreneur above and don’t forget to subscribe on   Apple Podcasts – Stitcher – Spotify –Google Play –Castbox – TuneIn – RSS.

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0:00
Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur Show. I'm Josh Elledge, Founder and CEO of UpMyInfluence.com. We turn entrepreneurs into media celebrities, grow their authority, and help them build partnerships with top influencers. We believe that every person has a unique message that can positively impact the world. Stick around to the end of the show; we'll reveal how you can be our next guest on one of the fastest growing daily inspiration podcasts on the planet in 15 to 20 minutes. Let's go.

And with us right now, we've got Tina Anderson. Tina, you are the co founder and CEO of JustThriveHealth.com and you've been in business for quite some time. You've helped a lot of good people.

0:50
Yes, we haven't been in business for about six years and helping people everyday and change their lives. It's been amazing.

0:57
So you weren't always like As a teenager, you weren't extolling the virtues of probiotics were you?

1:04
You are absolutely right, Josh, I was not. I always had this dream of being an attorney. I wanted to be an attorney. And I wanted to, you know, change the world in that way. And so I did become an attorney, but it doesn't change the world isn't good.

1:20
And you were you mind sharing what you were doing professionally? So you had your doctor of law from john Marshall law school, and then what did you end up doing?

1:31
I was in litigation. I was doing Civil Defense litigation. So I was on the defense side and I'm practicing, you know, arguing motions going to trial although my my kind of expertise was settling cases, I had a knack for bringing two sides together. It's just kind of who I've always been like that even as a kid. And then I went into to have a more of a work life balance. I went into corporate law so I was working for a family pharmaceutical business where I I was able to have a great life balance and spend more time with my kids and be home to raise my kids while I was still practicing law and doing that kind of stuff, you know, doing all the corporate stuff.

2:12
So we had a separate conversation that talked all about some of the product lines that that you're an advocate for and and I am as well, but what brought you to start just thrive probiotic This was back at the beginning of 2013.

2:29
Right, right. Exactly. Um, well really, it was when we started in the pharmaceutical business when I started in the pharmaceutical business I was very into like the idea of helping people I'm like, this is so great that I get to use my professional knowledge to be helping people and to be making people you know, find help but what we found out after being in the pharmaceutical industry is just there were so many abuses going on, you know, we there's a place for pharmaceuticals for acute situations and you know, emergency room medicine type of situation. But not for treating chronic conditions, chronic conditions, we need to get to the root cause of the problem. And we saw the over prescribing of medications. And it really wasn't the way we lived. Our my husband and I lived our lives with our children. We saw, you know, our kids, you know, they got a fever, we would let them ride out their fever a little bit, because we know that's the body's natural mechanism to fight an infection. Of course, we would never do it to the point where it would cause them any harm, but we really avoided antibiotics as much as possible. And we just we lived a more natural lifestyle. And so we just thought, you know what, we're not doing our life's work anymore. And so we looked into we wanted to get into natural health and wellness and we through a I always say through a lot of prayer affirmation and the right place at the right time, we were able to actually purchase the exclusive rights to these very, very exclusive pharmaceuticals. I mean, bacterial strains, probiotic strains from London University Top leading researchers on gut health and probiotics in the world. And from there just thrive probiotic was born. So it's the most gratifying journey I've ever been on bar none as far as career. You know, people will always say, how did you walk away from your, you know, career as an attorney, right? I don't I don't think of walking away from anything. I mean, I feel like I have I mean, everything that I earned as an attorney, I could apply to what I'm doing now. negotiation, you know, all that kind of stuff. And so I just, I don't feel like I walked away from anything. I feel like my life has been only further enhanced from doing what I'm doing.

4:41
Yeah. So what were the first so you come across this product line, you're like the world needs this. What do you do then?

4:50
Yeah. I really had no idea what I was doing.

4:55
No, didn't you teach you how to start an e commerce business in law school?

4:59
No, no. Not at all. And so, you know, I just I just started researching online. I mean, that's one of the gifts of being an attorney is the ability to research I just research I was on calls all the time talking to different people. I, I would I remember like with a merchant processor, I'm like, what's the merchant processor? What's the payment gateway? You know, what, what's the whole website and creating website and you know, it was it was really really hard to be honest with you. It was really, really hard. I have never worked that hard in my life. But now that I know what I know, I mean, that you know, so we did all this stuff. We built the business and I was just calling people calling health food stores literally I was cold calling people in the beginning and and it's just crazy to where we've grown to right now and never in a million years, five years ago or six years ago, would I have ever thought that we'd be where we're at now. But you know, it's just it was literally hard work and just getting it done.

5:55
So did what was the first platform you used? I mean, how did you build that? Did you hire To do all this,

6:01
yeah, we hired people to build. We did. Let's see, our first platform was a thing called a company called fortune three. And it was this ecommerce platform on QuickBooks. I mean, we did. We did all kinds of different, you know, when we still use QuickBooks for our wholesale for our health food stores, but the EAC once we switched over to Shopify, it was, you know, game changing for us. So we see to Shopify about three years ago, and that was game changing for us. But we started out with using some web developers and a lot of them, you know, I'd say that nobody could ever make fun of lawyers about being shrewd because we met a few web developers along the way that weren't exactly up to par. But then since then, we've met some great people. And I'd say one of the biggest things that really built our business was starting to go to masterminds and becoming a part of my lives. I just been involved in the industry, going to events and shows and networking with people, you know, ever I feel like in this in the industry that I'm in in the health and wellness space. So giving, and people just want to help each other out. And we just met great people along the way and started joining masterminds, it was the best investment and they are investments. They are expensive, but they were the best investments we made along the way. Because that's how you learn to do you know what you're doing or listening to podcasts like yours. I mean, that I can't forget that those things are so important to be, you know, you've got to just constantly educate yourself.

7:38
Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And so was this. Did you find that this environment maybe was a little bit different than the legal world? Oh,

7:47
yes, completely.

7:50
Everyone's additive each other and you go to the health and wellness shows and everyone's like, in jeans and their branded t shirt and everyone's super nice, especially from coming from farm at work. Everybody's suit and tie. I mean, it's just a much more casual yet, like loving and and of course there's exceptions to that rule. But most people have been amazing in this industry and everybody, we're all in it together. We all we have competitors within industry, but our competitors really aren't big pharma. Our competitors are not each other. We all I want people to be taking lots of different supplements. One of the things we've done in our, with our brand is we've tried to elevate the level of the standard of the quality of the products. You know, I think supplements sometimes get a bad rap because people don't know if they are research and we have done research we actually have a double blind human clinical trial on our product, which is absolutely unheard of in the supplement industry. So you have 13 double 13 human clinical trials going on right now. It's unheard of in this industry. So we are always trying to elevate you know our whole industry by by doing these types of these types. Sonny's

9:02
Okay, so you build the website, you've got items in your cart, you know, on a platform, where do you get your first customers from?

9:12
Yeah, well, really our first customers were coming from health food stores, we were calling health food stores. And that's where we really built our business was to be. So we were selling that and we were finding that the more educated the customer, you know, the store was, the more they buy, you know, I mean, we had we started out but really, we had two tiny health food stores that really started our business because they were like, this is amazing. This research was incredible. And then when we went to the online space, we just started working with influencers really, and people speak at different events. We would speak at different I know, one of the events that we went to was Weston a price which is very Oh, yeah, yeah, great, great organization. You know, we haven't microbiologist speak there, and then we talked to some influence in that space, and then they would talk about us and then it would lead to other you know that we would go speak at other shows, and we would meet other influencers, and then they would start talking about us. And it was, it was a very organic, we grew very, very organically. We actually even to this day, don't spend that much. We're very different than a lot of e commerce babe brands, because we don't we haven't spent a ton of money on Facebook ads, and right, little ads and all that. Although, you know, we're starting to now we just wanted to make sure we were doing it right. And the thing is, the product works so well. And I know everyone says that, but it really doesn't. So it just it sells itself. I mean, it's been incredible how it's really sold itself for people, whether people have digestive issues or whether people have you know, skin issues, whether people have, you know, anxiety, depression, all of those things are a sign of an imbalance in your gut. So, yeah, it's been pretty incredible.

10:55
So, um, so Tina, I think a lot of people probably are pretty interested in How do you attract and how do you work with how do you engage with influencers?

11:07
Well, it's been we have an we have an affiliate manager that handles it and her she outreaches to all, you know, influencers through Instagram. And, and it's also just from going to different shows that are in our industry where we'll find somebody that's maybe speaking, and we check out their platform, and we realize they have a nice following, and then we connect with them. But it's really about relationship building. And I feel like that's one of the things that's just so important is, I've just, I mean, not to pat myself on the back, but I just I love people. I love building relationships with people. It's not something I needed to research and learn about. It's just who I am. And so we just really built some beautiful relationships with influencers who now have really become close friends of ours. That's been helpful, but really, on a regular basis. We have a platform we use which is called reversion. And that's Where they sign up for the link and they you know they are influencer manager will reach out to them send them the link and we send them lots of information or studies we some collateral and things like that that they could talk about. We send them swipe copy and that kind of thing.

12:16
So I mean typically you know, if you've gotten a product like this, you know, there's likely an affiliate relationship there's something like that like how do you construct those deals?

12:29
Yes, we do a commission we do pretty much everything based on commission we did toy around with pain, pain, doing a flat payout to an influencer and now never ever paid out. I mean, now, the only way it's really worked for us is doing a commission based type of program and then occasionally, we'll give the influencer a discount to in addition to that, so their link is tracked through their discount the coupon code as well as their link like unrefreshed So if if a discount code is used, it'll automatically trigger that that person gets the commission for that sale. Mm hmm.

13:09
Wow. Well, so I mean, in terms of like your it was savings Angel, you know, we ended up paying out over a million dollars in commissions. And I would say the vast majority of that money went to our top performers. It's, you know, you got your, like, your top 20. And then then you kind of got everybody you know, you have your, you know, kind of low level performers that maybe refer one or two people but you got these super performers, that they get some piece of content that just ranks like ridiculous, you know, anybody who searches for probiotic their articles coming up. And so I would imagine you like this system a whole lot better than just paying for Facebook ads.

13:56
Yes, I definitely do. I definitely like this system. Way better.

14:02
So, like, how do you identify or how do you build the relationship with those top top influencers?

14:11
Um, you know, a lot of it has been just meeting them and just be like I said, going to the shows that's really those are the influencers that we have the best relationships are ones that we've actually met. And really our affiliate manager is amazing she is she's just the same way like loves to build relationships she just like cares about these people so genuinely and yeah, just an amazing she's awesome so I just think that I think people influencers can see right through that and it's not it's it's also a two way street, you know, how could we help you, you know, we have a, an influencer there. We're trying to help them or you know, we ask them to do, like, for example, a home At home workout routine with everybody being home, they, you know, they they are, they're doing that for us, and then that way we can promote them and we're trying to help them because we want people's message we want them to grow as influencers because they're doing so much good in the world and promoting this health and wellness in the natural space. And so that's really what I just think by meeting them in person and nurturing the relationship the same way you're nurturing relationships with your customers, you know, and I think that's the other piece of it for us really two is like our customers are. They're just amazing human beings. I mean, our customers have been great, our our team is awesome, and we have incredible customer experience. I think that we have great team members our culture is so important to us as a brand that's probably been the most exciting part of being an entrepreneur is how we could really deeply impact our team and our employees lives and it's been that has been really really fun. Excellent. All right,

15:47
well, Tina Anderson, you are the CEO and co founder of Just Thrive Health and is on the web adjusted JustThriveHealth.com the name of the company is Just Thrive and Beautiful, beautiful website, your products, your branding. Clearly, you've been doing it, you've helped a lot of people over the past six plus years. So thank you again for joining us. Thank you Josh for being here.

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