HigherDOSE and The Science of Feeling Good

[00:00:05] Phillip: Alright. We got the Avengers back together. We finally... It's been it's been too long.

[00:01:45] Brian: Way too long.

[00:01:46] Ingrid: I know.

[00:01:47] Phillip: Alright. I'm gonna do a big wind up. So hold on.

[00:01:51] Brian: We're going to do a wind up? I thought we stopped with the wind ups.

[00:01:53] Phillip: We got the wind up. I actually we have to give her a proper intro because it's been too long, and she has a new job.

[00:01:58] Brian: And we have new audience members who need to know who you are.

[00:02:01] Phillip: A lot of new audience members these days. Alright. So she is the Chief Marketing Officer at HigherDOSE transforming infrared therapy into Instagram worthy wellness lifestyle products with fifteen years scaling DTC brands across beauty, CPG, and wellness, including brands like Mac, e.l.f., Nestle Health Science, Nuun Hydration, and many more, including being the host of Future Commerce's own Infinite Shelf Podcast. Welcome back to the show, Ingrid Milman Cordy.

[00:02:31] Brian: Woo. Woo.

[00:02:32] Phillip: Welcome back.

[00:02:33] Ingrid: Hey, guys.

[00:02:34] Phillip: It's been far too long.

[00:02:36] Brian: You've emerged from the black hole of a large CPG company that we may have mentioned. {laughter}

[00:02:46] Phillip: Are we allowed to keep that in? There's no corporate comms pulling that out this time. Right?

[00:02:51] Ingrid: Yeah. Sounds good.

[00:02:52] Phillip: That's good.

[00:02:53] Brian: You've emerged from your cocoon into the HigherDOSE butterfly.

[00:02:59] Phillip: How long has it been since your transition out?

[00:03:01] Ingrid: I left in January.

[00:03:03] Phillip: Congrats.

[00:03:04] Ingrid: So here I am. Yeah. It's a good six months, seven months now.

[00:03:09] Phillip: Yeah. What was the transition? So the last we talked to you, you were at Nuun, right? And how much of the time within Nestle Health Science were you Nuun versus the larger holdco?

[00:03:24] Ingrid: Yeah, good question. So Nuun got built into different business units, and I was always kind of connected to those business units. When I first came in, I was still very, very focused on Nuun. And then it got built into the business unit, which I then oversaw every brand within that business unit across all consumer touch points. So social, influencer, media, all of those elements across that brand and then some of the other, let's call them lifestyle brands, were in that portfolio that I oversaw. So I was always still a part of Nuun, thankfully. It definitely had much less control and just the way it got divided the way things typically do in a partner company where like you got much more specific in your focus across a lot of different organizations versus like broader and deeper.

[00:04:20] Phillip: Once upon a time, good friends of mine at Nestle Health Science, you would ask them, "What brands are a part of Nestle Health Science?" And the first word out of their mouth would be like, "Woah, it's Boost." And I'm like, "That's the one that everybody... That's the one that you rep?"

[00:04:40] Ingrid: Yeah. I don't know.

[00:04:40] Phillip: It does a tremendous amount of volume, though. It's a big business.

[00:04:43] Ingrid: There are some really awesome brands within Nestle Health Science now. Garden of Life...

[00:04:49] Phillip: Garden of Life. Obviously.

[00:04:49] Brian: Yeah.

[00:04:49] Ingrid: And Vital Proteins.

[00:04:52] Phillip: Obviously.

[00:04:53] Ingrid: Good brand. Yeah. So those were brands that I got a chance to work on. Even Orgain, they were partial and now they're more and more involved. Some really great brands and that was fun to work on and also meet the really smart people that came in with those brands.

[00:05:08] Phillip: Ones you'd be surprised to, like ones that are sort of like shelf sleepers, as I'd call them, like Solgar, right? Solgar.

[00:05:15] Ingrid: Yeah. Solgar is a great brand.

[00:05:17] Phillip: Surprising, right? What's it like post big corporate? You've done a lot of big corporate stuff, but you're back in the DTC world. You're doing the scale up again.

[00:05:28] Ingrid: Yeah, back where I belong, frankly. I'm really grateful for the time I had at Nestle. It was especially, I would say, the acquisition part because I came into Nestle through the Nuun acquisition for those of you just meeting me. Hi, hi, new friends. That was like an MBA, like in real time of watching the entire process from beginning to end. The bankers preparing the data room, doing the endless management presentations, then closing the deal, getting the exciting text messages and stuff like that.

[00:06:03] Brian: That's a full time job all into its own.

[00:06:04] Ingrid: It was truly a full time job all to its own. Fun fact, I was about thirty eight weeks pregnant when we finally knew that it was going to be Nestle Health Science. And then I took the call sharing the news with the rest of the organization over Zoom from my hospital bed where I had delivered my first son.

[00:06:30] Phillip: No. That's some lore right there.

[00:06:33] Ingrid: My husband took a picture of me doing this with my newborn son, a couple of hours old on my chest on this Zoom call. And he was like, "This is the most Ingrid picture that has ever happened." {laughter}

[00:06:45] Brian: Closing deals from the delivery room.

[00:06:47] Ingrid: {laughter} Literally.

[00:06:48] Phillip: That's wild.

[00:06:50] Ingrid: Yeah. So that was really fun and truly, like I said, just an MBA in real time, just like super fast. And then watching the good, the bad, and all the different changes that happened with the transition. And I'm really grateful, for the time that we had and what happened at Nestle, but I'm also, yeah, I'm back where I belong. I love the faster paced hustle bustle of this, I don't know, if you're aligning the maturity and the growth of a company with the lifespan of a human, I think this teenage stage for an organization, which we're at at HigherDOSE, is like my sweet spot. I love it.

[00:07:27] Brian: And you are entering a world that's like adjacent to the world you've lived in before, but like, you've been in a lot of traditional CPG, health, beauty, wellness, and this is like cutting edge biohacking. But you actually had HigherDOSE early on on Infinite Shelf, I think the first season, maybe even your first episode. I can't remember. Somewhere in there.

[00:07:54] Ingrid: No. It was on the first season, but definitely, like, yeah. We had Lauren and Katie, the two founders, the Co CEOs.

[00:08:00] Brian: Yeah.

[00:08:01] Ingrid: Yeah, they're just really good friends of mine. I've been on the journey with HigherDOSE from basically the very beginning, like when we were just infrared sauna spas in New York City, and helped them... I built the first Shopify website at my kitchen table. And they were just friends of mine that I was helping and consulting with and things like that while I was doing my normal full time gigs. And so it's been really amazing following them and checking along on the journey and watching them grow into this incredible force. I knew it was special in the very, very beginning when we opened up the spas and basically every celebrity you could ever pay a million dollars, we didn't have to pay anything to, came in, took a bunch of selfies, organic social. It just like blew up because celebrities, models, like it was just the hub of cool and interesting even ten years ago before people even understood what infrared sauna was. And sauna culture was not even really a thing at that point. And now it's very much a thing. It's a big part of culture. And I think HigherDOSE, I know HigherDOSE, I've watched them create that and create so much innovation and so much cultural meaningful content and education around all of its benefits. So it's really amazing to get to join, to rejoin at this stage.

[00:09:21] Brian: Yeah. It's super interesting because you like you said, you started out as like a spa, but really took off when you introduced consumer products.

[00:09:32] Ingrid: Yeah. And it was kind of like the stars aligned in this way because what happened was we have the two spas... There was one spa in Soho in New York, and then we opened up a second location in Williamsburg. And we were in a couple of pop ups like with Equinox and with ABC Carpet and Home. If you know, you know. Lots of really cool New York City places. And then we were getting inundated with people being like, "I want to come to your spas, but I don't live in New York City. I live in Chicago," or whatever. And so we were like, "Man, we really have to..." And to Lauren and Katie's credit, they were like, "We have to innovate something that can create a consumer product." And that's when they created the very first infrared sauna blanket, which people call the infrared sauna burrito or the infrared sauna wrap.

[00:10:21] Phillip: Make me a burrito. I want that.

[00:10:23] Ingrid: I know, right? Who doesn't want to be in a warm, cozy burrito? Yeah, we like started that. Now there's like a bajillion copycats and things like that. But that was like a true innovation. And that created a lot of the ethos for product development going forward for HigherDOSE of just like, let's be the first to market, let's create products that people crave and can't live without.

[00:10:45] Phillip: I gotta ask, how often is HigherDOSE mistaken for a cannabis brand?

[00:10:52] Ingrid: It's a very good question. I would say less than you would think. If I were to come in now and hear HigherDOSE for the first time, I would absolutely think it was a cannabis brand. But we've got to remember, we started before cannabis was legal. So it wasn't a thing back then. For those of you who don't know, HigherDOSE, the D O S E stands for dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphin, and they're your happy chemicals. So we get you high naturally, we bring out those happy chemicals in you. And that's kind of like the dose part of HigherDOSE is so cool, but I feel like a lot of people don't really necessarily know that. And so that's my job now as a CMO to bring that to life.

[00:11:36] Brian: And you've been using the products for a long time as well.

[00:11:40] Ingrid: I have. Yeah. I'm a complete addict to HigherDOSE and have been even before I came on full time.

[00:11:46] Phillip: If you wanna see the difference between someone that uses it and someone that doesn't, look at Ingrid and then look at us.

[00:11:51] Ingrid: Oh my god.

[00:11:52] Phillip: Look at Ingrid and then look at me.

[00:11:56] Ingrid: {laughter} You look great. You look great.

[00:11:57] Phillip: Thank you. I try.

[00:11:58] Brian: You look incredible at a company like that. We were talking about this in the pre show.

[00:12:03] Phillip: Yeah. I was gonna say. Yeah. I have to say. So you've been in beauty before. Right? So and I feel like that's sort of like a cyclical part of your career. You've been in beauty, been in fashion. What is it like to work for a company where you have to sort of be like, there's like an aesthetic part of the job, I would say. Do you feel like that there's a pressure there to sort of like, you have to look good? Is that part of it?

[00:12:30] Ingrid: Here's what I will say. I never feel pressure to look good. I think what I feel really confident and great about saying about HigherDOSE is that pretty much everyone who works at HigherDOSE lives the brand, loves the products, loves taking care of themselves, loves wellness routines, geeks out... Forget it. Our text message threads about peptides and red light.

[00:13:00] Brian: You're bunch of nerds.

[00:13:01] Ingrid: We're a bunch of beauty and wellness nerds that find commonality in those things. Hey, if that makes us look good in the end, that's a great thing. But honestly, a lot of it is just driven from passion, excitement, and love for all things wellness. Then, yeah, it doesn't hurt to want to look a little better.

[00:13:22] Phillip: I love that. The nerds are always into optimization and finding your stack. Seems like there's a real hardware fixation around HigherDOSE. What is the personalization aspect and how do you make it personal? Walk me through what it's like as sort of the customer experience.

[00:13:40] Ingrid: Yeah, so it's ever evolving. I think one of the things that differentiates us is that we are female founded and female focused. So it doesn't mean that men are not our direct customers. We're not particularly girly. I think if anything, we're sensual and we're sexual. But I think that doesn't necessarily have a gender or it doesn't have a gender. But what it does mean is we take a much more intuitive approach to wellness. I think the masculine biohacking world is, to your point, very much about tracking your statistics and measurement. And don't get me wrong, we're all doing blood testing and things like that. But we are trying more and more and ourselves are relearning this type of methodology of being a lot more in tune with what we need. So like, for example, every night when I lay on my PEMF mat after I put my two kids to bed, I adjust my wave length that I want to select based on how I'm feeling, like what my body needs. So I kind of take a second and I sit with myself. I don't look at data. I don't look at my Oura Ring score or whatever. I just I'm like, "Okay, I think I really... Tonight's a gamma wave night," and that's what I'll use. And obviously, it takes a little bit of understanding the products in order to use them. But we do more and more these days, I think, want people to think about how they feel and do those internal body scans and intuitively tune into themselves. And I do think that that's a much more feminine, the divine feminine, if you will, way of taking care of yourself more holistically.

[00:15:24] Brian: Intuition, I think, is a huge movement in general right now. We've been so inundated with data that it's like it's almost like we have no data. We've talked about this over the past couple of years at Future Commerce. You know, for marketers, same thing kind of applies.

[00:15:43] Ingrid: Yeah.

[00:15:43] Brian: Do you find this sort of viewpoint is spilling over beyond just taking care of your own body and helping your customers take care of their bodies? Do you find this spilling over into how you operate as a business?

[00:15:58] Ingrid: It's also a learning curve for me coming from being so heavily DTC and so heavily digital marketing in general, I was born making decisions based on data. So it's something that I am getting more and more comfortable with. But you would never do what we just launched, we launched an out of home campaign with trucks in Manhattan, with all of our imagery wrapped over them.

[00:16:26] Brian: Sweet.

[00:16:26] Ingrid: And so if you see a big truck with a beautiful, juicy booty and a microcurrent body sculptor on it, that's us. And that's something that I've had to settle with my data driven, numbers driven being of making a decision like, "Yeah, I feel aligned to doing that." Same thing with all awareness, driving brand building things, which I think is what we need most of right now as a brand and where we're at in our journey. A lot of it is intuition driven and partnering with the right people in the right places at the right time. So, yeah. And then I think you have to look at data afterward.

[00:17:07] Phillip: Someone's gonna ask us at some point, when you're looking at something like a mobile ad vendor, how do you how do you qualify to spend on something like that? Is there a metric that you're using? Do you have sort of like a pool of funds for experimentation? You're fairly early on. So how are you deciding what's worth experimenting on for things like either out of home or... Give us the rationale and walking through how you're deciding that that's something worth spending on versus more performance at this point?

[00:18:46] Ingrid: Yeah. So I think we still look at everything altogether. So we have to look at our overall CAC. We have to look at our blended ROAS. We have to look at our MER, like marketing efficiency rates. So those things matter. And then the line below that, just like one click in, is really important. So we use Northbeam for multi touch attribution. We actually just got Prescient that is helping us with our platform performance at the campaign level to understand, okay, if we drop this particular channel's investment by 20%, what does that look like? Does it actually impact? And again, these are all AI driven, data driven marketing tools that are just like the leveling up of that very still performance marketing minded decision making. I think then you have to get your baseline and understand what that typically looks like. And then take about, I like to take like 15%, 20% of your quarterly budget. And that's like your play money, right? So you can play and test into CTV or out of home or these more like new driving channels. And I don't really love to do more than one of them at the same time because then it's really hard to understand what's driving what, especially when it's outside of any performance. Like an out of home, for example, is a good thing. Even CTV now has become performance marketing aside.

[00:20:16] Phillip: Sure.

[00:20:17] Ingrid: But yeah, so I think that would be my approach. It's like, understand your baseline, know where things are when they're static, and then add to that with like 15%, 20% of a play budget and see where that takes you.

[00:20:29] Phillip: Since you're so focused on, I'll say, I don't know that you would say... I sense that you're focused on female demographic. How does podcast work? Would you go after podcast? I sense podcast being very male centric. Is that something you would test into?

[00:20:46] Ingrid: Yeah. So there are a lot of male centric podcasts. Obviously, the biggest podcast is like Joe Rogan or whatever. Yeah.

[00:20:53] Phillip: Very testosterone centric. Yeah.

[00:20:55] Ingrid: Yeah. But I do think like I'm as a female, listen, I'm a podcastaholic. I love podcasts, but I listen to different podcasts. So I think like the Dear Media podcasts are fantastic. I have parasocial relationships with all of their hosts. Yeah. I think we are. They're just like female oriented podcasts.

[00:21:17] Brian: Interesting. Yeah. Would you I mean, it feels like there's opportunity to even like do your own. Feels like you could have all kinds of interesting interviews.

[00:21:31] Phillip: Brands as media companies, Brian?

[00:21:33] Brian: Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep.

[00:21:34] Phillip: I've heard of that. Someone, some thought leader said that at some point.

[00:21:36] Brian: Somewhere. Yeah.

[00:21:39] Ingrid: Yeah. I think some brands are more uniquely positioned to do that well than others, and I might agree that HigherDOSE is pretty well positioned for something like that. Yeah.

[00:21:46] Phillip: Yeah. Not to beat the drum too hard, but coming back to podcast. Obviously, women listen to podcasts. That's not what I was saying.

[00:21:55] Ingrid: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:56] Phillip: What I was saying is that there's brands like AG1 are pretty broadly marketable to everybody.

[00:22:04] Ingrid: Yeah.

[00:22:05] Phillip: So therefore, they don't have to do a ton of targeting and they can sort of just vary their messaging when they go to individual sort of like podcast networks or a specific podcast. They sort of they can target something like energy or something like, you know, athletic performance or they can really just vary the messaging for the audience. I would see this as being a little bit of a different play with something like HigherDOSE. If you hypothetically were going after podcasts, how would you walk through that? Just as a hypothetical.

[00:22:38] Ingrid: So we are, so we have a couple. And again, because our internal team is also a really great barometer of who our target consumer is. We actually start with whatever we're all listening to, right? So we have like a big spreadsheet of like everyone's favorite podcasts. A lot of us have similar ones. Some of us have new ones. And so we'll definitely start there, again, because it's nice because we're able to market to ourselves a lot of the time. But then the same thing with like, we do have a male audience in particular, like the red light hat.

[00:23:15] Brian: Mhmm.

[00:23:16] Phillip: Of course.

[00:23:17] Ingrid: Even though I use it. It's a lot. It's targeted toward men. So you can, like, put on your red light. {beep}

[00:23:23] Phillip: Oh, yeah. {laughter}

[00:23:24] Ingrid: It's kind of amazing.

[00:23:26] Phillip: I haven't heard the beep before. That's great.

[00:23:29] Brian: I like the beep.

[00:23:30] Ingrid: We have a big male audience with the hat, female too, obviously, but you know, then PEMF mat, sauna blanket. I think the one product that maybe is a little bit more female driven is the red light mask. But even every single day, people are like, "My husband keeps stealing my red light mask. I need to steal it. I need to buy another one."

[00:23:48] Brian: I feel like it just maybe could be some like cultural media TV show or something.

[00:23:54] Ingrid: Yeah, this is for everyone. I think for us, it's all about the connection to the lifestyle. Like people who want to better themselves, are curious about new technologies, are questioning what they can do better, more differently. Optimization, I think, is the thing that connects our consumers more than male, female. It's just about making yourself better, learning more, things like that. And that's where we're focused right now.

[00:24:21] Brian: Super cool. Yeah. I think the media component, beyond podcasts, it feels like there's so much momentum right now for red light devices. And really, what you've done is you've made something that was super expensive actually accessible. And that, by nature, starts to pick up heat because people can do things that they previously weren't able to accomplish. It's kind of got like a funny futuristic element to it that's cute and interesting, I don't know, just has a natural social shares tendency to it. And so I part of me is like, well, what are other creative ways that you could be having this pop up beyond just traditional podcasting and product placement?

[00:25:17] Phillip: What are you trying to say, Brian? Timothy Chalamet just sitting in a field with the HigherDOSE logo on the left?

[00:25:23] Ingrid: I mean...

[00:25:23] Brian: Why is it not in Dune?

[00:25:25] Ingrid: Yeah. Give me a call. I won't say no to that. I think that, again, it's all about people wanting to get better and feel better and find faster, better ways to do that. I remember so clearly getting a facial a few months ago and they asked me if I wanted the red light enhancement. And it was like $30 which when you see our red light mask and it's 300 something dollars, you're like, "That's crazy." But then you think about you have this product now and you can use it every single day. And it's so much more impactful actually that if you use it every day or every other day or even three times a week than like the once every quarter, if you're fancy getting a facial. So it does end up sort of making so much sense and being more easily integrated into people's lives is kind of the mission that we're on, right? Because it's like wellness when it is so expensive and you have to leave your home to do it, it just becomes the barriers add up, right? So even though our products, I don't think are the lowest price point, because we put so much effort into quality and efficacy and making them beautiful and making them feel really elevated when you're using them. We care about that feeling that you get of using our products and having them in your home. But when you really divide it by how much you would have to spend on a red light something somewhere else, or going to a sauna and having to drive there and paying individual sessions and things like that, it just becomes actually so much more economical and easy and convenient to just do it at home. And I think that's so aligned with our mission of just democratizing, frankly. It's funny to take a premium, really, frankly, elitist maybe brand and call it democratizing. But I agree. I think there's a lot of democratizing qualities about HigherDOSE.

[00:29:19] Brian: Where I was kind of going was like, you nailed it. In home routine. I mean, let's think back to Saratoga Water Guy for a minute because that got such insane media traction. I feel like there's opportunity to demonstrate those kinds of routines in fun social ways, do a little bit of well, I'm sure you've moved well past your old viewpoint on UGC.

[00:29:58] Ingrid: LGC?

[00:29:59] Brian: LGC.

[00:30:00] Phillip: No, give it to us. No, don't just hint at it. Now you got to do it, Ingrid. You've got to get the line.

[00:30:05] Ingrid: Oh boy, this is going to be on my tombstone. So when user generated content, UGC, started becoming popular, I was very deep in my premium luxury fashion and beauty headspace where I was a late adopter. And I called it LGC, loser generated content. And I will eat my words now because UGC is everywhere. And I actually think it's the most effective way to talk about a product.

[00:30:38] Brian: Well, since you sort of coined that, tools for people to create content have also been democratized.

[00:30:46] Ingrid: Totally.

[00:30:47] Brian: So all content is high fidelity content now. Yeah.

[00:30:51] Phillip: I love the retconning here, Brian. It's like, well, it was actually the tools that were the problem, not the tools holding the tools.

[00:30:58] Brian: Well, the tools holding the tools. Yeah. I mean, that that was also true. No question. Early Internet users may or may not have been the demo for the products that you were selling back then.

[00:31:10] Phillip: Yeah. No. We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.

[00:31:13] Brian: Exactly.

[00:31:13] Phillip: We get better because we see better models and we see people doing things. We're like, "Oh, I could do that." And yeah, I think the losers get better too and become users over time. That's okay. Right? I think Ingrid could have been right back then. She's definitely right now. I think that there's a scary crossover now where you can easily generate the users with AI, and it fools a lot of people.

[00:31:40] Ingrid: Yeah.

[00:31:40] Phillip: I maybe will lay it in here. You know, I made a podcast ad that's talking about our book in thirty minutes the other day. And I shared it to a few people. And a lot of people were like, "Holy crap, where did you find that?" And I was like, "Yeah, I made that with AI." It's it's totally fake. And I think it would fool most people now. And it only gets better from here. So UGC is probably a pretty costly endeavor for a brand too. I don't know. How do you guys think of UGC? Is that a post purchase thing? Is it an upfront investment?

[00:32:20] Ingrid: UGC is sort of right now we are just now... We were very fortunate in that people love our brand so much and want to be a part of what we are putting out into the world. Like the actual, I hate using this word now because it's just been so overused and beaten to death, but like the community of people that feel aligned and personally identify with your brand, HigherDOSE, similar to Nuun, had just this crazy fan base of people that wanted to be aligned to it. So we never, even from normal average customers all the way up to Courtney Cox and all the celebrities that have posted about HigherDOSE organically, not being paid, no one. So we've been spoiled for a really long time with some fantastic user generated content that just came into our hands because of how much people just love our products and love being connected to them and the personalization of it all. And now I think we're just wanting to amplify that a little bit more. So we have increased our seating expectations and the way that we give products to people, especially in press and creators that are aligned. And then really, we have a lot of doctors and functional medicine practitioners and acupuncturists, yogis, all of these different body workers that love our products and that have developed a personal relationship with our brand. So we see those people because we care. We to hear their feedback first and foremost. How does this feel? Is this intuitive? There's a lot of people that we work alongside as we are doing our product development, frankly. And so those people are like seeding, but really they're kind of part of the process anyway. So yeah, I think seeding is something where it's just like doubling down on these days. But thankfully, UGC is not something we've had to actually work too hard to get. It was just part of the process, and now we're just doing it a little bit more intentionally these days.

[00:34:27] Phillip: Could I... This is sort of bridging from that idea. I do wanna sort of take a a little bit of a left turn because I think it hinges on open mindedness. You're talking about sort of open mindedness sort of shifting of your prior mindset into a new mindset. We've talked a lot about metaverse in prior iterations of Infinite Shelf slash Future Commerce. And you've spoken in prior eras about hiring people who sort of got into the metaverse for a growth mindset. How does that apply today? How are you thinking about it today? And how does that sort of apply to wellness innovation? Are there people that you see as sort of being at the forefront or at the cutting edge that you see as sort of being well positioned, not just in a career sense, but they see this as in this sector. They understand what's going on. And so they're well positioned to speak into the job.

[00:35:31] Ingrid: Yeah. So do you mean the people that we hire internally?

[00:35:34] Phillip: Yeah.

[00:35:35] Brian: Yeah, what does that look like now?

[00:35:38] Ingrid: Yeah. I mean, these are people who have to feel comfortable in discomfort. So take away even our products and our mission and the type of brand that we are. But the phase that we're in is this hyper growth. Everything is fast. We do a little bit of everything, wearing multiple hats. So you already have to be someone who's comfortable with not having a fully blown path, and so a lot of times you'll hire someone and they'll have a lot of questions. And we're like, "That's a great question. What do you think is the answer?" And so they have to be for this stage of company. And then you layer on top the fact that, yeah, we are bringing new technologies and new wellness solutions into people's homes that are not something that you're going to go to your normal medical practitioner and your doctor, and they're going to go, "Oh yeah, you should go home and meditate on your PEMF mat for twenty minutes a day because you have anxiety." They're going to give you a different protocol. And we have to be okay and comfortable with the fact that those two realities exist, and we have to find our place in it for the people that we're trying to serve.

[00:36:57] Phillip: Yeah. And that takes a certain kind of a person to work in that environment, for sure.

[00:37:04] Ingrid: Yeah. People who are just are willing to challenge the status quo without wanting to do that just to do it. We want to do it because it actually means something and it's going to make change in people's lives versus just being conspiracy theorists.

[00:37:23] Brian: So what does that look like now, actually? What are markers of someone that is like that? What are they into? Because I think back when you said that, basically you were like, "I want people who are willing to go try new things, experiment with blockchain, experiment with the metaverse, be out in front of things, get ahead of things. And even if they don't pan out, they're comfortable with that."

[00:37:48] Phillip: Are they vibe coding is what Brian's asking?

[00:37:50] Brian: Yeah. Are you hiring 10x vibe coders as your next set of team members? Exactly. {laughter}

[00:37:58] Ingrid: I think that there is a frequency that we want people to operate at in HigherDOSE. We definitely want people who think differently, who are just higher vibration. So as crazy as, you know, woo woo as that might sound or whatever label you want to put on it, you kind of know when you're having a conversation with someone, if they're a high or a low frequency kind of person or in that mindset in the moment. We do work a lot with energy. There's a lot of people on our teams that are on the side, like tarot readers and astrologers, and really think about their chakras and our body workers and our healers and are trained in Reiki and just people who are super smart. And you put a data table in front of them and they're going to understand it and be able to give you meaningful insights from it. But then they're going to go off and do their Reiki master training after hours. And do think there is this calling to a higher power, a higher energy that you'll see a pretty deep through line through in the HigherDOSE staff.

[00:39:14] Brian: Interesting. This is reflective of, I think, a lot of brands viewpoint on how to do what's next. A lot of people are looking beyond traditional metrics now. And it's interesting to me that we're... Phillip and I have been on the train for a long time that brands are religions in many ways. And if brands are religions with believers, true believers in them, what are they tapping into for how they connect with customers? And you start to get into some crazy worlds because I don't think... It's been a while since these worlds have connected in American culture at least. Right? And so it's almost been like church and state, corporate and religion, feels like those boundaries are breaking down.

[00:40:18] Phillip: I would like to file an amendment to our 2022 report wherein we where I said that brand is religion. I would like to file an amendment because I believe...

[00:40:30] Brian: You said brand is cult.

[00:40:30] Phillip: Yeah. It's actually probably closer to a cult. I believe that it's probably closer to brand has come to occupy a space of a system of belief where an organized system of like an institution like religion once occupied.

[00:40:48] Brian: Mhmm.

[00:40:48] Phillip: And so it has taken the space and the form of...

[00:40:53] Brian: Religion without religion.

[00:40:53] Phillip: Yeah. Exactly. It's taken all ritual that religion used to provide, like places for community, habituation, rites of passage, elements of loyalty, acceptance, and some even... It does all of those things. It has, like, surrogates for all of these things, but with none of the upsides or downsides. It just is.

[00:41:17] Brian: Right. Without the actual spiritualization. And what I think is happening right now is that spiritualization has actually made its way into brands.

[00:41:26] Phillip: I think that's right too. And I think that's something that we're starting to see. So that's the aside. Sorry, Ingrid, you were here for it. Yeah. We could sort of get back on track, but I do think that that's something we are seeing play out, and it's nice to see some brands maybe just own the fact that they are woo woo, and that's okay. I'd rather that than some sort of play woo woo on performance marketing and not be woo woo in real life.

[00:41:54] Ingrid: And frankly, I think the beauty of HigherDOSE is that we are actually where science meets the woo, right? So there are tons and tons of scientific evidence that's been studied about the technologies that we sell. So red light therapy, like so much data around it. PEMF therapy was literally developed by NASA, like for astronauts coming back from the mitochondrial and cellular damage that outer space had done to their bodies. Sauna, like centuries of history and people living healthfully through sauna culture, but now it's being backed up by all of the different studies talking about contrast therapy and the frequency of sauna is like thirty minutes for four days a week of sauna and your heart health is thirty years younger or something crazy. I'm not going to quote that exact thing. But all of the modalities that we sell are science backed, and there's a ton of evidence behind them. And we also add in the intuitive, the inspired by nature, the fact that we do believe that energy is power and that the energy that you put out into the world matters and the frequency that everyone within the organization has to emit. All of those things are true at the same time as the scientific evidence behind the modalities is also there.

[00:43:24] Phillip: We should probably do these way more often because I feel like I've got 1,000 questions for you. You're getting to the next phase, I know that you're just a few months back into the role CMO. Right? So you're back in the saddle. What does 2026 look like? What do you predict that you'll have to overcome in 2026? And maybe looking out beyond, what do the next four or five years look like?

[00:43:56] Ingrid: Yeah, I love that question. So again, being where our consumer is, so understanding all of the different touch points of like, we care a lot about their home and making wellness routines accessible, easy, intuitive, things that you want to crave. So that will always be the through line, whether it's 2025 or whether it's 2055, that is HigherDOSE. We want to make sure that we are bringing you solutions that you love and that you want to keep using and that you feel natural integrating into your lifestyle. The things that will add to that is ways that we can find more people who need those solutions, so whether that's creating a little bit more media around our brand, I think there's so much education that we need to find the right channel to get out there. It might be YouTube, it might be our own podcast, to your point. So I think 2026 is definitely going to be like an education and getting to the right people era for us because we've had so much organic success of getting to the right people. I think the next phase will be putting more intentionality around awareness and brand building. I don't really like to plan out much further than that because the world changes, and I like to ride those waves.

[00:45:13] Phillip: It really does.

[00:45:15] Brian: It changes fast.

[00:45:17] Phillip: Really quickly now, too.

[00:45:18] Ingrid: Being in DTC for as long as we all have and certain like I have, the only thing that's been the same is that everything changes next year. Right?

[00:45:26] Phillip: That's true.

[00:45:26] Ingrid: So it's important to plan ahead and have a method or a strategy, but the way that you execute that strategy, man, hold on to your cheeks.

[00:45:36] Brian: I mean, changes quarter to quarter. Sometimes it's like, oh, wow. There's a brand new tool. And you have to change everything.

[00:45:43] Phillip: I couldn't have predicted Elon launching, you know, Gooner anime waifu AI this year and maybe that's a channel we could all exploit next year. That'd be nice. Maybe she could sell us all, you know, our next wellness supplement product. I don't know. That's a thing.

[00:46:02] Brian: Get her that red light. You know?

[00:46:04] Phillip: She doesn't look like she needs it, but maybe we all do. Yeah. I definitely need it. According to all the YouTube comments, I could use that in a better haircut. But it's brutal out there. This has been fantastic. Where can people go get their HigherDOSE?

[00:46:21] Ingrid: Higherdose.com. You can also get us at Sephora, Nordstrom, and then internationally as well.

[00:46:30] Phillip: I love it. Looking forward to having you back. We should not make it as long of a wait next time. Have you back very, very soon.

[00:46:36] Ingrid: Super happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

[00:46:38] Phillip: And thank you for watching Future Commerce. If this conversation sparked something for you, why don't you like and subscribe? Give us a follow wherever you get your podcasts and it helps more people join this conversation. If you want more Future Commerce in your world, check out our print shop. We've a lot over there for you. You know what we have? We have Lore. It's our brand new book, and it's available right now. And you can get it at futurecommerce.com/lore, or all of our print including, well, this one's no longer available. This is Archetypes, we got all kinds of print over at store.futurecommerce.com. We've got stacks and stacks of it, including merch and other kind of collectibles that'll be beautiful in your home for you to experience with culture and commerce. Go get it, store.futurecommerce.com. Remember, commerce shapes the future because commerce is culture. We'll see you next time.

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