Catharine Arnston’s Algae Revolution and the Quest for Better Health

Summary

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Escaping the Drift with John Gafford

Episode: Catharine Arnston’s Algae Revolution and the Quest for Better Health

Date: August 26, 2025
Guest: Catharine Arnston, Founder of Energy Bits
Host: John Gafford

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Episode Overview

In this episode, John Gafford sits down with Catharine Arnston, founder and CEO of Energy Bits, for a deep dive into her transformation from a seasoned corporate executive with an MBA and a PhD in Natural Health into a trailblazer in the algae supplement industry. The episode explores Catharine’s personal motivation, the science behind algae as a “superfood,” the monumental pivots and sacrifices she made as a founder, and how Energy Bits grew from a scrappy startup to a multimillion-dollar wellness brand. The conversation is candid, rich with entrepreneurial advice, nutrition science, and practical wisdom for escaping the drift and taking decisive action in both health and business.

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1. Catharine’s Background & Origin Story

• Canadian Roots & Academic Journey

  • Catharine grew up and studied in Canada (Ivey School of Business, Queen’s University), later moving to the US for work.
  • Recently relocated from Boston to Miami for better weather and business opportunities.
  • [02:31] "I'm actually Canadian... My MBA was at the Ivy School of Business, which is Canada's version... of Harvard." – Catharine

• Catalyst: Her Sister’s Cancer Diagnosis

  • 17 years ago, Catharine’s younger sister was diagnosed with breast cancer and advised to eat an alkaline diet.
  • Research led Catharine to plant-based nutrition, then deeper into algae as a potent, dense source of nutrients.
  • [05:55] “My baby sister developed breast cancer... Her oncologist told her to change her diet to an alkaline diet...” – Catharine
  • [06:31] “I went on the internet… and it turned out to be a plant-based diet... because of the chlorophyll and phytonutrients.” – Catharine

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2. Discovering Algae: The Science & Its Benefits

• Algae as a Superfood

  • Recognized by NASA and the UN for extraordinary nutrient density and potential to address world hunger.
  • One gram of algae = 1,000 grams of fruits/vegetables in nutrition.
  • Loaded with protein (64% in spirulina), more than any animal protein.
  • Over 100,000 studies document health benefits: anti-inflammatory, heart & brain health, detoxification, anti-aging, gut health, and more.
    • [09:12] “There's nothing in the world with more protein than spirulina algae... ours is 64% protein.” – Catharine

• Practical Advantages

  • Sold as tablets the size of a baby aspirin; 10 per day for health benefit.
  • Three-year shelf life; easy to transport and consume vs. bulky, perishable produce.
  • [10:52] “One little thing. Most people do swallow them and you do need a minimum of 10 to make a difference in your health.” – Catharine

• Chlorella vs. Spirulina

  • Spirulina = protein, nourishment, energy, and focus (morning/afternoon use).
  • Chlorella = detoxification, recovery, pulls out heavy metals, alcohol (even relieves hangovers), supports sleep and digestion.
  • [13:30] "Chlorella has fiber in it... has 25 times more chlorophyll than chlorophyll water... pulls out toxins, heavy metals, glyphosate, pesticides, and yes, alcohol." – Catharine

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3. Entrepreneurship: Building Energy Bits from Scratch

• Seeing a Gap in the Market

  • Realized the poor branding, education, and product quality in the US algae supplement market.
  • Sourced higher quality algae from Taiwan, elevated branding, and focused on consumer education.
  • [18:19] “I went online to see what other companies were selling... the packaging was dumpy... the branding was terrible... I can certainly do better.” – Catharine

• Going All In: Financing & Early Obstacles

  • Bootstrapped business with personal savings and six checks from friends ($10,000 each).
  • No formal market research; Catharine relied on conviction and visible need.
  • Hit rock bottom: personal bankruptcy, foreclosure, car repossession, but never missed payroll or quit.
  • [24:03] "So I... used up all of my own savings. I ran dry. I declared personal bankruptcy... I declared bankruptcy... I refused to give up because I burned the bridges. There was no going back." – Catharine

• Pivots and Brand Evolution

  • Started under the tongue-in-cheek brand “Naughty Nutritionist” and “Naughty Bits.”
  • Rebranded multiple times before settling on Energy Bits—aligned with science and mainstream appeal.
  • Initial traction came from unexpected channels: sports and endurance athletes, then wellness practitioners.
  • [27:29] “I trademarked it... The Naughty Nutritionist... we sold Naughty Bits... But people thought I was some sort of nutrition porn star...” – Catharine (on early branding missteps)

• Key Lesson for Entrepreneurs

  • Expect to pivot repeatedly; what you think is your big idea may require radical shifts in sector, channel, and message to succeed.
  • [26:09] “Whatever original idea you have, I can almost promise you, that's not the winner. You will pivot in so many ways you won’t believe it.” – Catharine

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4. Growth Strategies & The Podcast Revolution

• Growth Trajectory

  • First 10 years: slow, with revenues between $5,000–$350,000/year.
  • COVID pandemic was the inflection point; as consumers turned to health, Energy Bits was positioned with solid science, messaging, and products.
    • Annual revenue doubled post-2020: “1 million, then doubled, then 1.5, then 3, then 6, then 12...” – Catharine [34:13]

• Zero Paid Advertising: Organic Reach via Podcasts

  • Targeted early adopters through hundreds of podcast appearances (375+ since 2020).
  • Notable podcasts (e.g., Dr. Mindy Peltz, Dave Asprey) led to million-dollar revenue spikes from a single episode.
  • [35:36] “Podcasts have been our number one way to reach the marketplace… That one podcast generated a million dollars in revenue.” – Catharine
  • Building a tribe of committed customers rather than chasing mass-market retail.

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5. Product Application: Health, Diet, and Supplement Simplification

• Replacing Supplements & Supporting Fasts

  • Catharine argues most multivitamins and fish oils can be replaced by her algae products, which are actually food, not synthetic supplements.
    • [12:25] “This can replace your multivitamin, your CoQ10, your fish oil, your collagen powder, your biotin… So you can eliminate…” – Catharine

• Use Cases & Protocols

  • Spirulina for intermittent fasting, energy, cognitive focus, insulin sensitivity, and overcoming hunger.
  • Chlorella for post-party detox, improved sleep, bowel regularity, and immune support.

• Tailored Advice

  • John reads off his long supplement list; Catharine identifies which can likely be swapped out for her algae tablets.
  • [49:12] “For any therapeutic purposes, 30 [tablets] a day would be…” – Catharine

• Scientific Evidence & Anecdotes

  • Customers have submitted bloodwork showing dramatic improvements; some cancer patients saw major biomarker reversals.
    • [42:33] “We’ve had people send us their lab tests from having cancer, and they were given two weeks to live, and they started taking this stuff and they’re still living.” – Catharine

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6. Memorable Quotes & Philosophical Insights

• Entrepreneurship

  • “Damn the torpedoes. I’m doing this. Burn the bridges, burn the boats. There was no B plan.” – Catharine [21:52]
  • “People think entrepreneurship is glamorous. Yes, there are moments, but most of it is just grind.” – Catharine [27:49]
  • “If you really want long-term success, you gotta be willing to give up a lot in the moment and struggle and suffer and stress to get the life you want. It's not easy, but it is worth it.” – John Gafford [57:13]

• Health & Wellness

  • “It’s not what you eat, it’s what you absorb.” – Catharine [12:25]
  • “Algae isn’t new, it’s just new to you.” – Catharine [56:58]

• Luck & Preparation

  • “Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.” – John Gafford [33:18]
  • “We had spent 10 years doing the science, getting... redesigning the packaging, redesigning the website...” – Catharine [33:20]

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7. Listener Q&A & Practical Applications

• Covid, Vaccines, Detoxification

  • Discussion on superoxide dismutase (SOD), mitochondrial health, and algae’s potential to protect against environmental and vaccine-related toxins.
    • [45:47] “Not a single one died. And they all left the hospital without any illness... The mortality rate [of those not given spirulina] was off the charts.” – Catharine (on an Israeli COVID study)

• Listener Health Questions

  • John asks about personal health issues (blood viscosity, insulin sensitivity); Catharine gives targeted supplement advice and recommends 30 tablets daily for therapeutic goals.
    • [48:30] “Spirulina, absolutely. Insulin sensitivity? Yes.” – Catharine

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8. Advice for Entrepreneurs (The Big “What Would You Change?”)

• On Regret and Lessons Learned
  • She wishes she’d trusted more in the process and not stressed so much about outcomes.
  • [55:25] “Just have more faith that I would get there because it was very, very stressful… I didn’t pay myself for 10 years… but that would just be less fear and trusting that I was doing the right thing.” – Catharine

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9. Where to Find Energy Bits & Discounts

• Online: energybits.com
• Discount: Use code DRIFT for 20% off
• Product Structure: Large bags (best value); can be used like a “nutrient multivitamin replacement.”
  • [56:14] “Energybits.com... we do have a 20% discount code drift. Drift gets you 20% off anything.”

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Notable Segments (Timestamps)

• [05:55] – Discovery of algae after sister’s cancer diagnosis
• [09:12] – NASA/UN endorsement & nutritional breakdown
• [13:30] – Chlorella for detox, spirulina for daily energy
• [24:03] – The personal cost: bankruptcy, foreclosure, and sacrifice
• [26:09] – Branding missteps: “Naughty Nutritionist/Naughty Bits”
• [32:44] – COVID as the business turning point
• [35:36] – The power of podcast-driven, organic marketing
• [42:33] – Customer health transformation stories
• [49:12] – Supplement simplification with algae tablets
• [55:25] – Lessons on entrepreneurial stress and faith

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Conclusion

This episode offers both a compelling founder’s journey and a science-based case for considering algae as a game-changing element in nutrition and wellness. Catharine Arnston shares a transparent, relatable view of entrepreneurial struggle, wisdom for finding product-market fit, and actionable science to help listeners “escape the drift” in both their health and careers. Whether you’re seeking a practical edge as an entrepreneur or looking to level up your health, the takeaways are both inspiring and actionable.

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Transcript

[Progressive Insurance Announcer]

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[John Gafford]

Obviously this is doing incredibly well. You guys are built an amazing company. If you go back and do one thing different, what would it be?

[Katherine Arnst]

What would I do differently?

[John Gafford]

And now, escaping the Drift, the show designed to get you from where you are to where you want to be. I'm John Gafford and I have a knack for getting extraordinary achievers to drop their secrets to help you on a path to greatness. So stop drifting along, Escape the Drift. And it's time to start right now. Back again for another episode of like it says in the opening man, the podcast that gets you from where you are to where you want to be. And today, live in the studio, ladies and gents, we have somebody that's got an interesting little business here, man, that's grown to be a big, big business. She is somebody that came out of corporate America. She has a PhD in Natural Health and m. I mean, all of this stuff. This is a smart lady. I mean, she's a smart cookie and had a really cool job and all of a sudden she decided, you know what? After 25 years in the corporate America, I'm done. I'm gonna go teach people how to get healthy eating algae. She is the founder of Bits, which are energy bits, which are algae tablets. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the program. This is Katherine Arnst and Katherine, welcome to Vegas.

[Katherine Arnst]

Oh, yeah. Vegas, baby.

[John Gafford]

Vegas. Yeah. Glad to have you. I hope you are winning. So you're winning more than you're losing.

[Katherine Arnst]

Oh, well, yes, I'm winning in life.

[John Gafford]

Yeah.

[Katherine Arnst]

That's good. I took my big gamble as an entrepreneur starting a company in an industry that doing something that nobody believed was possible. And it's taken me a while, 15 years, but it's clearly. I won my hand.

[John Gafford]

You've won your hand, which I like. Well, let's go back. So obviously, I mean, you look at the accolades here. I mean, where did you go to school? I mean, all of this stuff.

[Katherine Arnst]

I'm actually Canadian.

[John Gafford]

Okay.

[Katherine Arnst]

So all my education up until recently, the PhD was in Canada. So my MBA was at a school called the Ivy School of Business, which is Canada's version, excuse me, of Harvard. And I did my undergrad at Queens, but most people don't know those schools, but they are really good schools. And then I moved to the United States. I've lived in Boston, Massachusetts for 35 years. Although I recently, just last year, relocated to Miami because I just got tired of being cold too. Cold?

[John Gafford]

Yeah, definitely. Well, here's the question though. Coming from Boston though. How is your. When did you move to Miami? When did you move there?

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, I. I bought, you know, years ago in a pre construction. But I started living there this January.

[John Gafford]

Okay.

[Katherine Arnst]

And it was. It's been heaven.

[John Gafford]

Okay now I was gonna say though, because this. This the first summer though.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, yeah. But it's been pretty good so far. Yeah, yeah.

[John Gafford]

You know, it's funny, I. I'm a born and raised Floridian myself.

[Katherine Arnst]

Are you.

[John Gafford]

Right. I did. I. North Florida. But. But you know, I have family in Pompano. Family and Boca. Family all through there in Miami now properly. And I gotta tell you now even as a born Floridian living here, when I get off the plane in Florida in the summer, I can't breathe. Yeah, it's this humidity just hits you right in the face.

[Katherine Arnst]

But I like it because I just. I just was so tired of being cold. So anyways, I'm So I'm in Miami.

[John Gafford]

Any hurricanes yet?

[Katherine Arnst]

Not yet, but this will be my first season.

[John Gafford]

Welcome to Florida.

[Katherine Arnst]

Here it comes back with me next year.

[John Gafford]

You know, it's. It's funny. Well, I'll tell you, I'm going to warn you about some stuff with hurricanes if you don't know. So people don't understand this. When hurricanes come, like everything. Everything stops.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yes.

[John Gafford]

Like everything closes. Or even if you're like. When I moved to. When I moved to Vegas, I lived in Tampa prior and we never had. We hadn't had a major storm come spinning through Tampa Bay and forever. But literally even the storm gets close to you. Like everything closes.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah.

[John Gafford]

And it's just shut down. And people come from other parts of the world and they don't realize like, well, the storm didn't even really hit here. Why is everything closed? Yeah, it's like because that's just how it is. Everybody just boards up.

[Katherine Arnst]

That's why people are going to need to buy algae because it will feed you and nourish you well forever. But if you can't get to the grocery store and you're hungry and you need something, you Just pop a few of those tablets and you're good to go.

[John Gafford]

That's it. That's it. So let's back. You went to the Ivy, you went to the Ivy school and you got an MBA there.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah.

[John Gafford]

That's pretty impressive. Yeah. So who recruits? So right out of school, who recruits?

[Katherine Arnst]

McKinsey. It's all, it's like the Harvard of town, like I said, but. And I wanted to go to the States, so I got recruited and I moved by actually a Canadian, got one of our governments and I moved to Manhattan. So I lived in Manhattan for two years.

[John Gafford]

Very cool.

[Katherine Arnst]

Had a great time, apparently. Did such a good job, they promoted me, move me to Boston. I felt like I was going out to the, you know, the boonies. But Boston grew on me. It's a charming city, lovely historical city. And I lived in an area called Beacon Hill, which is very old.

[John Gafford]

And is that where the, the, what is it the Paul Revere Trail? Is that. No, no, the Freedom Trail.

[Katherine Arnst]

Freedom Trail is near there. Yeah, right. And, and Boston is lovely, but it's also very medical and I'm in the nutrition, holistic health area. And I just got, like I say, I just got tired of being cold. Miami is becoming center, so it's a really great place for me, for my business and I just enjoy the, the climate so far.

[John Gafford]

So the question is, so you had your mba. I mean, we're going from heavy business focus and then we're, we wind up on algae. So how do we get from there?

[Katherine Arnst]

I know.

[John Gafford]

Yeah, right. It's like. Well, I used to, I used to be a surgeon and now I paint motorcycles.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, right.

[John Gafford]

What?

[Katherine Arnst]

Huh? Tell me all that. Yeah, so. So what happened was I only have two sisters, one older, one younger and close to both of them, and they're both Canada. And 17 years ago, my younger sister, my baby sister developed breast cancer. And her oncologist told her to change her diet to an alkaline diet because it wouldn't be important for her healing. They didn't tell her exactly what it did or why it was good for her so. Or what it was. So the first call she made was to me, her big sister. I'm just a really good researcher and confined. I love my sister. So I said, I have no idea what this alkaline diet business stuff is, but I will find out.

[John Gafford]

I'll figure it out.

[Katherine Arnst]

And I went on the Internet and anyone could. And it turned out to be a plant based diet. So I found because of the chlorophyll and the phytonutrients that are proven to build your immune system. And she was going to do chemo. So her oncologist, which is a cancer specialist, wanted her to have a strong immune system. But as I was doing more research, I found that apparently there's a German scientist by the name of Otto Warburg who in the 30s won a Nobel Prize for discovering that cancer cannot exist in cells that are slightly alkaline. There's a scale of 0 to 14, and slightly alkaline means slightly over 7. So the fact that her oncologist recommended an alkaline diet to protect. Protect the other cells from having the cancer move into them, I thought was pretty important. So anyway, she changed her diet, went through chemo. I learned so much about plant based nutrition. This was 17 years ago. Nobody was talking about it then.

[John Gafford]

And not a lot of Internet sites for this.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I'm just a crazy high energy, you know, problem solver.

[John Gafford]

Where were you researching this?

[Katherine Arnst]

Online.

[John Gafford]

Okay.

[Katherine Arnst]

Online. Yeah. You know, the Internet was around.

[John Gafford]

You know what's funny? I get. It's so funny. You get to a certain age and you're like 17 years ago. Like in reality, wasn't that long ago.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Gafford]

I mean, yeah, I guess we're. God. Yeah, it's like 2010 almost.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah.

[John Gafford]

God. But like, you throw out 17 years and my brain goes. My brain goes like, 1985.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yes. Yeah.

[John Gafford]

Nope, it's 2026.

[Katherine Arnst]

So anyways, so I thought I should do something about this, but I had no money at the time because I gave up my corporate career to help my sister, and I knew nothing about it. So I enrolled in a health place called the Institute for Integrative Nutrition in New York, which was for a certificate in health coaching. So I went through that, and then I put my own curriculum together. This is what led me to algae. I put my curriculum together and I taught plant based nutrition at corporations and hospitals. But people were literally laughing at me because as I was telling them to eat more vegetables, and they said, my mother's been trying to get me more vegetables, but they give me gas. They. They're too much work, they're heavy to carry home to the grocery store. My kids won't eat them, my husband won't eat them. Like a thousand reasons they go. So I thought, okay, I've seen the, the health benefits of vegetables. If I can't get people to eat vegetables, I need to find a way to give them the nutrition in a way that doesn't take a lot of time, doesn't give them gas, doesn't taste terrible, and all these. And I didn't know how I was going to do it. But back to everything I found for my sister and I just went deeper and that's when I got to algae. Because it turns out algae's been endorsed by NASA for 50 years as the most nutrient dense food in the world. We have a quote saying one gram of alg has the same nutrition as 1000 grams of nutrition in fruits and vegetables. One to a thousand.

[John Gafford]

Really?

[Katherine Arnst]

Yep. I can give you the paper with a quote in it. We found out the United nations has endorsed spirulina algae. We're going to talk about the different algae, one spirulina and the other one's chlorella for 50 years. There's a global conference online. You can see the results of this conference. And they declared spirulina the answer to world hunger. Why? Because it has the highest concentration of protein in the world. It has three times the amount of protein as steak, chicken, fish. There is nothing in the world with more protein than spirulina algae. Yes, ours is 64% protein. Animal protein is about 32%. Next, turns out there's 100,000 studies documenting all the health benefits of spirulina and chlorella algae. Everything from preventing heart disease, preventing Alzheimer's, preventing inflammation, preventing accelerated aging, just getting rid of toxins. Endless. A hundred thousand studies, that's a big number. Turns out it's a agricultural crop. Yes, there's algae in the ocean and the aquarium and other places, but it's grown as a food crop in, in, in Asia. This is, is grown in hydroponically, so it's in fresh water. So yes, there's algae in the ocean. The stuff you grow, you spirulina, chlorella, if you buy it from Trader Joe's or from us. It's grown in freshwater ponds, then air dried and pressed into tablets. So it's been used safely in other countries for 60 years. 99% of all algae is growing in Asia. But the best part of it all is that it came in these little tiny tablets. They're about the size of a baby aspirin and tablets has the same nutrition as an entire plate of vegetables. So while I'm talking to you right now, I just had a plate of vegetables.

[John Gafford]

That one little thing.

[Katherine Arnst]

That one little thing. Now, most people do swallow them and you do need a minimum of 10 to make a difference in your health. Yeah, now I like to chew them, but now, now if you swallow them, there Is zero flavor. Zero.

[John Gafford]

Wait a second. Wait, wait, wait. So if you got. You can eat 10 of them, how do. Why does it have the same nutrition as a plate of vegetables?

[Katherine Arnst]

Because I use that quote from NASA, one gram. So I took the measurements.

[John Gafford]

Okay.

[Katherine Arnst]

Of the. The. We sell them in large bags of a thousand tablets and one bag has the same nutrition as 551 pounds of vegetables. We. I didn't.

[John Gafford]

Okay with me.

[Katherine Arnst]

But that's 30 grocery carts of food is contained in one bag. This is why preppers buy it for, you know, people probably with hurricanes, because it was. Is the most nourishing food in the universe. But nobody knows that. So. So I, I use that, that quote from NASA to calculate the, the concentration. It's a little under a pound of vegetables per tablet.

[John Gafford]

Okay.

[Katherine Arnst]

So. So and I'd like to chew them, but most people do swallow them. So now. And by the way, they last. The expiry date is three years. So vegetables go bad after three days. Algae tablets, ours last three years. People don't like vegetables because they don't like the taste. There is zero taste if you swallow them. It's, it's obviously, it's green. I will admit, sure. People are taking, like you said before we started, you're taking like 20 or 30 supplements. This can replace. There's 40 vitamins and minerals. This can replace your multivitamin, your CoQ10, your fish oil, your collagen powder, your biotin. There's five right there. So you can eliminate.

[John Gafford]

I take. I take. Well, yeah, you mentioned three of those. I already take.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah. So. And this is food. Those are. Supplements are made in factories, mo in many cases from synthetics. But your body has a hard time recognizing and absorbing because it's not what you eat, it's what you absorb. So bottom line is with all the science, with all the international endorsements, the fact that it's food, fact that.

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[Katherine Arnst]

Been taken daily in Asia for 60 years where it's a multibillion dollar industry. The fact that it has all the attributes and gives you all the things. It gives you the fiber. Chlorella has fiber in it. So it gives you the fiber of. Why do people eat vegetables? Because they want the fiber, which helps with bowel movements, and they want the chlorophyll. Algae has the highest chlorophyll in the world. Chlorella. Algae is called chlorella because of the chlorophyll. By the way, chlorophyll in your hemoglobin, the condition are virtually identical. So chlorophyll builds your blood, but our vegetables don't even have any chlorophyll in them anymore. So there's zero benefit of chlorophyll. You know, you can get chlorophyll water, but algae has 25 times more chlorophyll than chlorophyll water and 500 times more chlorophyll than arugula. So why do you take vegetables for the fiber. Chlorella stimulates. We'll talk about the different benefits. But chlorella stimulates bowel movement. So you get all the benefits of vegetables without having to eat them. And there's one calorie per tablet. You can travel with this. You can't travel with a big bag full of broccoli anywhere. And who does anyways? I can't eat a lot of vegetables because they give me gas. As you get older, people have a hard time digesting vegetables. Mothers, they fight with their kids to try to get them to eat vegetables. And you just give them a few of these, you never have to worry again. Guys go crazy. The fact they don't have to eat vegetables anymore, Are you kidding me? And if you're a partier and you were here in Vegas, baby. Chlorella pulls out toxins. We'll talk about the two different algae, but chlorella pulls out toxins. Heavy metals, glyphosate, pesticides, and yes. Drum roll. Alcohol. When you take 30 of these, after any kind of alcohol, beer, wine, spirits, you are stone sober in an hour and a half. And you will never have a hangover ever.

[John Gafford]

Really?

[Katherine Arnst]

Ever.

[John Gafford]

Yeah, that. I mean, that's the market here.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah. Vegas.

[John Gafford]

Yeah. So you eat 10 of these? Do we 10 of both?

[Katherine Arnst]

Way more than that. And I've been taking them for 15 years. So I.

[John Gafford]

What's the rest of the diet? What's the rest of your diet?

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, I eat whole foods. I. So I. I'm not carnivore, I'm not vegan. I'm not anything. I just eat Real food. I can't eat any processed food because I'm so clean and so healthy that it upsets my stomach. Seed oils give me stomach digest. So I eat eggs, I eat grass fed beef. I, you know, I don't eat a lot of fruit. Fruit because I can't eat a lot of sugar. I really do intermittent fasting. So these are really great for intermittent fasting because they don't break a fast. There's no car you can. And so the ketogenic. So I usually intermittent fast. Although when I'm traveling I usually do eat breakfast because I never know what I'm going to eat next. So I'll.

[John Gafford]

So they won't break up because I'm a 36 hour fast guy.

[Katherine Arnst]

Good. God bless you. Yeah, yeah. This is fantastic for fasting because especially when people are getting into fasting because they're worried about being hungry. Spirulina, you will never be hungry because it's the highest protein in the world, loaded with essential fatty acids. So it satisfies your hunger, stops cravings and has nutrients in here that builds your brain and improves your focus. So I was on an entrepreneur's podcast yesterday and entrepreneurs, we work long hours. Well, you're an entrepreneur. Long hours. 16, 16 yesterday. Yeah, yeah. And you're running around, you don't have time to eat properly. And if you're eating in a rush, you're probably standing up and you're probably not digesting properly and you have gas. So it's not pretty. So this is your answer. You just, you pop 10 or 15 or 20, 30 for lunch, 30 is 30 calories. There's one calorie per tablet, fully nourished. So spirulina is I call your nutritional insurance because it gives your body everything that it needs. You could live on this forever. You would not even need any other food if you didn't want to. And then chlorella, which is a detoxing wellness algae, I call it your wellness, your health insurance. This is your nutritional insurance. This is your health insurance. This pulls out toxins, heavy metals, glyphosate, pesticide, alcohol. Athletes use it because it pulls out lactic acid. They use spirulina as a pre workout, this is a post workout. It also has the highest tryptophan in the world, which is a precursor to melatonin. So this helps you sleep, this helps you with bowel movements. This is what fiber does, is it? This has fiber, this stimulates. What's fancy, word is peristalsis, but it's basically a Bowel movement. So it helps you poop, helps you. Helps you sleep, helps you poop.

[John Gafford]

Yeah, we're not that sophisticated, so we're good.

[Katherine Arnst]

So. And let's face it, people like to party. I absolutely promise you this will save your party life.

[John Gafford]

All right, well, let's. Let's go back and talk. So we. I think I have a good understanding of the, of what the product does. I want to talk about the business of the product. Right.

[Katherine Arnst]

Because.

[John Gafford]

Because a lot of our listeners out there that have, you know, hey, man, I want to start a business. I want to do something and this is something that, you know, you started. Walk me through. Let's whiteboard this out.

[Katherine Arnst]

Sure.

[John Gafford]

Let's take me back to like, you know what? I think I like this algae stuff. Through my research, I think it's good. Were you buying another product that was similar? Was there nothing available? Did you see a hole in the market?

[Katherine Arnst]

First thing I did, yes, I did see a hole in the market. So I went online to see what other companies were selling and how they packaged it, where they sourced it from. I went to some shows, I met some of these companies, and you know, this was 15 years ago and the packaging was dumpy. I mean, algae has been sold in America for 60 years.

[John Gafford]

Yeah.

[Katherine Arnst]

And it's a multi billion dollar industry in Asia, but it has never taken off here. So you have to scratch yourself and go, well, why? First of all, it's not grown here, so nobody knows about it. The number one there, you can't go to school or work without driving by an algae farm. Here we have soy and wheat and whatever. So. So when I saw the way they were packaging it, if you went to a health food store, it would be on the bottom shelf covered with dust, looked like, you know, had worm guts in it. Like, the branding was terrible. Terrible. If, if you want to sell something to America, it's gotta be pretty, it's.

[John Gafford]

Gotta be jazz black bag with like yellow sexy.

[Katherine Arnst]

It's got to get their attention. So none of that was happening. So first of all, I thought, okay, I can certainly do better than that because I also did a stint in the interior design industry. So I have a really good design. Then I saw that all of it was coming from India or China. But then I started reading about the better. Algae came from Taiwan, but 99% of what was sold in America came from these crappy places. So I thought, I'm going to find a better source for algae, which I did. So once I figured out that it needed to be explained Better. There wasn't explanation that nobody else is.

[John Gafford]

Nobody's telling the story.

[Katherine Arnst]

Nobody else is telling the story. Certainly needed to be branded better. And my background was in branding and marketing. And then I had some design work. I thought, I can do this. I know it's not going to be easy, but I can do this. So I just hunkered down and I had to learn the science of why this worked so well.

[John Gafford]

Well, let's, let's back up because now when you're looking at this, did you like a lot of people have like trophies in their office, right? Like, look at my awards. Look, I got this award. I got that word. My office is filled of disaster. Little mementos of mistakes that I made in business. And one of the things that sits on my desk is I have a hundred thousand dollar bottle of vitamins on my desk.

[Katherine Arnst]

Oh God.

[John Gafford]

Because many, many years ago you invested in one. No, we did. My sister and I were like, let's start a nutritional couple nutritional supplement MLM without ever asking anybody if anybody wanted it.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah.

[John Gafford]

And so that was like my thing was like, make sure there's a market for this before you dive head first. So what market research did you did to establish a market? Did you, did you maybe tease the market with stuff you didn't have like a Kickstarter idea or what was that like?

[Katherine Arnst]

I actually didn't do that.

[John Gafford]

You just went head first in.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, what I did. And I was by myself for literally five years because I wanted to be sure.

[John Gafford]

What year is this?

[Katherine Arnst]

So this was. It's 2010 is when I started the company. So literally 15 years ago. Right.

[John Gafford]

Okay.

[Katherine Arnst]

But my sister was sick the two years previous and then I had to go to school and then I did the education, which led me to algae. So I read the science and I was convinced there was something that everybody was missing because the science showed that this stuff was a game changer for people's health. Absolutely. Full stop game changer. And I decided I didn't care how long it was going to take me. I was going to bring this to market because we needed it. And that was even before the current health crisis, nutrition crisis, environmental crisis, because it was 15 years ago. So I didn't do any market research. I just knew it needed to be brought to market. And I was going to do my damnedest to outsmart all those food companies that been poisoning us with their calculated food engineering.

[John Gafford]

So damn the torpedoes. I'm doing this.

[Katherine Arnst]

Damn the torpedoes. Burn the bridges, burn the boats. There was no B plan.

[John Gafford]

What Was the budget.

[Katherine Arnst]

I had no budget.

[John Gafford]

Okay, so you boots, you bootstrap. You bootstrapped this or you get investors?

[Katherine Arnst]

I completely bootstrapped. I did take, I had six checks for $10,000 15 years ago.

[John Gafford]

Okay.

[Katherine Arnst]

And after that, and I used.

[John Gafford]

So can we talk about that? Can we talk about that?

[Katherine Arnst]

That.

[John Gafford]

Yeah, where the text come from?

[Katherine Arnst]

Friends.

[John Gafford]

Okay.

[Katherine Arnst]

Just friends.

[John Gafford]

So.

[Katherine Arnst]

And I had convertible notes.

[John Gafford]

Okay. No, no, this is interesting. So now, because there's people that are listening, like when we start a business, walk me through the process of going from I have this idea to sitting down with your friends and having a compelling enough pitch for them to write you checks for $10,000.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, well, when I was dating one guy.

[John Gafford]

Okay, I see date rich guys. There's number one date rich guy. Check that one off the list.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, I did. So I did, you know, I, I, I went through the science and I show, I wrote a, A deck. I, you know, you have to write a deck. And I showed pictures of all the crappy packaging other people did. And you know, the rates of heart disease escalating, the rates of cancer escalating. Clearly there was no solution on the current radar. And I'm, I've, I've worked a long time. I mean, and people trusted my judgment. So these are, people have known me for a long time. These weren't just people I met last year. And I had started two other companies prior.

[John Gafford]

Okay, so you successful?

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, successful enough, but not one. We had to shut it down because it was in the interior design industry and I needed more and I did take investors for that. And we needed lots of inventory, which required lots of money because it was furniture.

[John Gafford]

Well, I think the lesson here is if you, it's more importantly, it's more important for you to be investable as a human than have a good idea.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah.

[John Gafford]

Like they were probably writing you checks because of you.

[Katherine Arnst]

And, and, and at the time, 10,000 did sound like a lot of money.

[John Gafford]

Yeah.

[Katherine Arnst]

And now that I'm a multi million dollar business, it's not actually that much. Yeah, but these people could afford it. They were very, very wealthy. Anyways, but they better. More importantly, they knew me and they.

[John Gafford]

Were betting on you.

[Katherine Arnst]

And one was somebody I went to my m. Did my MBA with and one, and so she became one of my investors. So. But she had seen me in school. You run just about everything at school, so. So yeah, I had a personal track record with these people. I didn't ask for a lot of money. And they've so no luck.

[John Gafford]

You, you earn you earned those through reputation. You earned that.

[Katherine Arnst]

So. So I. So that's where that money came from. But the rest of it and just, you know, might as well spill the beans. I was so committed to this, but I had used up all of my own savings. I ran dry. I declared personal bankruptcy. I mean, it was. It was the most horrifying thing in my world, my life. Here I am from this fancy MBA school in Canada, and I. And I had to declare bankruptcy because I didn't have a dime to do this. I mean, I didn't go out for dinner for two years. I ate eggs and algae. And guess what? My favorite two foods are still eggs and algae. But I can afford just about anything I want. But. And I. My condo was in foreclosure for three years. My car was repossessed, but I refused to give up because I bur. Burned the bridges. There was no going back. I was, I was gonna tough it out.

[John Gafford]

No, but, but, dude, I love that part of the story because, like, people listen to this and you hear, oh, the mba, blah, blah, fancy school, this and this. I mean, now you hear that and like, okay, you were starting at less than zero. Not zero.

[Katherine Arnst]

Less than zero. You're starting less than zero because when you're. When you go declare bankruptcy.

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[Katherine Arnst]

You get no credit cards.

[John Gafford]

Oh, yeah.

[Katherine Arnst]

For 10 years.

[John Gafford]

Oh, yeah.

[Katherine Arnst]

That was on my credit rating for 10 years. It's gone now.

[John Gafford]

Yeah, of course.

[Katherine Arnst]

But nonetheless it was. I just knew if I could do this, it would be a game changer for the world. Absolute full stop. So I just toughed it out. And, you know, I did things like when I went to shows, conferences, I didn't have any money. I would take my trade show booth thing on a bus in the winter in Boston. Not an easy thing to do. And I have a very funny story to tell you and all entrepreneurs, you want it? You. What you need to know is whatever original idea you have, I can almost promise you, you that's not the winner. You will need to pivot. You will pivot in so Many ways you won't believe it. So I'm going to tell you a few of my pivots because some of them are pretty funny. Okay, so remember how I said I was first I gave lectures on plant based nutrition?

[John Gafford]

Yes.

[Katherine Arnst]

And so I would, in the lecture I would tell people what not to eat, like do not eat dairy. Do not eat, you know, you know, whatever. So I became, I became known, you'll love this as the Not Eat Nutritionist. Well, when you say that quickly, it sounds like the Naughty Nutritionist. The Naughty. Naughty Nutritionist. That was my business name. The Naughty. And guess what?

[John Gafford]

We sold.

[Katherine Arnst]

We sold Naughty Bits.

[John Gafford]

Oh my gosh.

[Katherine Arnst]

This is the absolute truth. I trademarked it.

[John Gafford]

The Naughty Nutritionist Nutritionist.

[Katherine Arnst]

And you can still find it probably online. I mean, it's hilarious.

[John Gafford]

Listen, listen. There are a few things in this life that I protect more than anything else. I protect my family, I protect my bank account, and I protect my Google search history because. And I don't think anybody needs to find me searching for the Naughty Nutritionist in my Google search history.

[Katherine Arnst]

That would be bad. But it's pretty funny. And I just, I, you know, I love helping entrepreneurs, but they, there's. People think it's, you know, entrepreneurship is glamorous. Yes, there are moments, but most of it's just grind. And it depends on how committed you are to what your vision is. And you have to pivot when things. So what happened was I did file a patent, I owned the patent, but it turns out that there was a woman, she was like 70 years old at, at the time in Nevada or somewhere, she called herself the Naughty Nutritionist. This woman did not look naughty at all. She was 70.

[John Gafford]

Maybe it was like a knot in a tree. Just like. That's the knot she's talking about.

[Katherine Arnst]

She was gonna sue me for using the name, even though I owned the trademark. But I realized by then, because people thought I was some sort of nutrition porn star, that this was not going to be a billion dollar brand called the Naughty Nutritionist. It just didn't have legs. So I said, hey, you have the name. You go get your. Keep the name. I'll go find something. And I, I did become Bits of Health and then I became Energy Bits. So. So it was.

[John Gafford]

That's how we got to the bits. That's okay. I thought it was the size of, of.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, they are, we call, I call them bits because they're bits of food. Which probably will change the name again, but I can't tell you what that is. But that was One of my pivots was changing the name another pivot. And again, this is important, is that I was very poor at the time when I first started, for the first 10 years almost. And I could only hire interns. And so young college kids, they usually, what do they do? They run because it's a cheap sport. You just have to buy bicycle, you know, running shoes. You don't have to buy equipment. So all of my young team members were running. And this is so great for athletes. The spirulina gives you energy and focus and the chlorella pulls out toxins so your muscles aren't sore. So they started telling their running friends, who started telling their running friends, who started telling their triathlete friends and their blogger friends. We blew up and became a sports nutrition product without even me trying or thinking about it.

[John Gafford]

I was going to say dud of everybody that I know, like Jesse Itzler. This is so on. This is so up his alley.

[Katherine Arnst]

This would be so up his alley. Jesse, if you're listening, you need this stuff. It's crazy. So we, in fact we had so many Olympic teams, not just athlete teams. I sent two of my team over to Russia for the Olympic the Sochi that year. And we, because I'm Canadian, we got complete invitation to the Canadian Olympic Village, the American American village. So it was pretty cool. But then I had to pivot because here's why the was just blowing up at that time. And sports retailers, all retailers were taking a hit. And so the sports retailers like Dick's were only buying products that were high ticket items or big branded. I did all the shows, the running shows, the hiking shows, the cycling shows, couldn't pick up a single retailer. So we had this fabulous product that the customers liked, but there was no distribution channel. So a friend of mine who was a chiropractor who also ran wellness shows, he said, you know, you know what, why don't you come to one of my shows, I'll give you a booth for free and just see how people respond. So I went to that show. It was love at first sight because chiropractors and wellness practitioners and functional medicine, they all knew about spirulina chlorella, but had never been able to find a clean source because we had, I had spent years finding the best source of it.

[John Gafford]

How'd you do that?

[Katherine Arnst]

Just research again, calling people.

[John Gafford]

Did you go to, did you go to Tyrone?

[Katherine Arnst]

I did not, but I somebody who, who was married to a Taiwan woman. And he became a consultant to me and he provided me with all the insights. And he goes there two or three times a year. I'm actually going next year. We're going to do lots of filming over there. So. So I was. It was. And we signed up like 10 accounts, like on the spot. So I pivoted into the wellness market because I couldn't get the channel, the retail channel in the original market to accept the product, even though the customers loved it. And I'm so. And we're going to go. We' going back into sports nutrition now because we will never be a retail product anymore because we won't. We don't need it. We sell through our own website. Dot com. No. And we sell through Amazon, but mostly through our own website.

[John Gafford]

Yeah.

[Katherine Arnst]

And we sell through doctor's offices and longevity clinics and biohacking clinics. And we'll probably start. And we.

[John Gafford]

That continues to rise every day. The market gets bigger every day.

[Katherine Arnst]

Exactly. So I'm glad of the choice. So the, the universe, whatever you want to call it, when you. You got to put your ego aside because you may think, well, this is what I'm going. What I'm going to do. And, and if it's not working, there's a reason. You either have the wrong channel, the wrong message, the wrong packaging, the wrong branding, something's not right. It might just be the wrong time. And somebody asked me recently, well, what was your big break? And you know what our big break was? It was nothing that we did. It was Covid. Covid turned around, was everything to us. Because suddenly instead of going to Disney with your, you know, money that you.

[John Gafford]

Saved, everybody bought a pellet.

[Katherine Arnst]

Peloton. Yeah. People buying peloton, they're caring about their health. They're making that the priority. And.

[John Gafford]

Well, because. No, because here's what happened. The first little bit of COVID Everybody got fatty eating frozen pizzas at their house, watching Dave Portnoy review frozen pizzas. And I was like, whoa, I gotta do something about this and I can't go to the gym. So, yes, you're 100, right? But I will say that was a cycle of mic. Maybe that was just my experience, I don't know. But there you go.

[Katherine Arnst]

And there's an expression I wish I could think of how I'd say it correctly, but that opportunity is preparedness meets the right good timing or something like that.

[John Gafford]

Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.

[Katherine Arnst]

Okay, so we had spent 10 years doing the science, getting. I redesigned the packaging over and over and over again. I redesigned the website over and over and over again. I redesigned the messaging over and over and over again. So when Covid finally hit, we were prepared for when people were ready to find us. Because if you don't have all those ducks in a row, you might. The opportunity might be there, the timing is good, but if you haven't prepared for the opportunity, you might not catch the wave. So that was what turned everything on. We have doubled revenue ever.

[John Gafford]

Well, I was going to.

[Katherine Arnst]

Single year since then, I was going.

[John Gafford]

To ask what your growth was year one, what did you sell?

[Katherine Arnst]

Oh, 50, maybe $10,000.

[John Gafford]

$10,000.

[Katherine Arnst]

I don't have the numbers in front of you, but it was. It may not even have been that. It might have been 5,000 because I was.

[John Gafford]

And then Covid. That was a hockey stock tick for you?

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah.

[John Gafford]

Straight up.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah. I mean, when it was 5, it was 10, it was 100 and there was 150 and it was 200 and then 250, but 300, but, you know, nothing, nothing really. 350. You can't build a, a billion dollar brand with $350,000 in, in revenue. So once we hit Covid, we, you know, 1 million then doubled and then it was 1.5 and then 3 and then 6 and then 12 and then, you know, it's just, it's just so.

[John Gafford]

So you don't do traditional, but you haven't done traditional marketing strategies. So talk to me about your marketing strategy.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, so, because this was so special and so focused, we're in the, what you call the early adopter stage, where people who really are lifting the hood, really looking for real stuff, not just fancy, what, you know, multi level. The real science. And because we have the science, and I am the spokesperson, we wanted to find other people who would want the science. So I started doing podcasts. When Covid hit, I started doing podcasts because, you know, that's really when they really started taking off because everyone was stuck in their house and they. As long as they had a shirt from the neck waist up, they were. They could be doing a podcast, right? You could have your jammies fully clothed.

[John Gafford]

Behind the desk just for you watching at home.

[Katherine Arnst]

So since COVID so like it's been three or four years or however many I have probably recorded at this point, maybe 375 podcasts.

[John Gafford]

Oh, wow.

[Katherine Arnst]

Most of them are zoom, but I do like to do. If I can do them in person, they're always better. So podcasts have been our number one way to reach the marketplace. Because when somebody's listening to a podcast, the podcaster has a Committed community that's interested in that subject matter and then that particular host. And so in 45 minutes I've been on some there two hours. I mean that's a lot.

[John Gafford]

That's a lot.

[Katherine Arnst]

That's a lot.

[John Gafford]

We try to keep normal. For some reason my desk just shut off. I don't know why, but you can't tell from the camera. So we're good.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, there you go. So podcasts have been.

[John Gafford]

We should really lose power or anything else.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, yeah, right. We did no advertising. 0. I finally now have a great chief marketing officer who knows all about digital marketing and digital footprint and retargeting and you know, we have all the fancy technologies. I mean it's crazy because. So just to show you the power of podcasts, like I will say the vast majority of them are small, you know, maybe 25,000 or maybe 100,000 followers or. But you know, there are a few and like Dave Asprey, for example, he's huge. And sometimes the timing is right. Like about two years ago, I was on Dr. Mindy Peltz's podcast. She a big, she's really big on. On fasting. And she had just written a book called Fast like a Girl. And the book went live literally about two weeks before my she. My interview with her was done in, in March, but the podcast didn't go live until September right after her book was gone. Gone. And the book took off in a huge way and so did the podcast. And we have discount codes. We have one for. For your community too, as long as.

[John Gafford]

I can remember what it is. And speaking of books, remember, pick up my book Escaping the Drift, coming out November. Available everywhere. Pre order it now. Thejohn gaffer.com sorry to plug for myself.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, that podcast, that one podcast generated a million dollars in revenue.

[John Gafford]

Wow.

[Katherine Arnst]

And I don't think I'm telling any stories out of whatever but Dave Asprey's, I was on his last September and for he's been doing podcasts for 10 years for whatever reason. My particular podcast was the one that.

[John Gafford]

Blew him up Blue up.

[Katherine Arnst]

It is the all time biggest downloaded on YouTube of all of his podcasts. We're at 1.3 million.

[John Gafford]

Yeah, you just never know.

[Katherine Arnst]

And we generated a million in revenue from it.

[John Gafford]

You know, it's so funny when you post as much content as we do. I mean, I do. You just never know what's going to work and what's not. I mean, one of my most viral clips ever was a guy in here talking about automated vending Machines.

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[John Gafford]

I mean, we've had some like, really, like, really intricate soup, like Dan Martell, I mean, really famous people. Perry Belcher, I mean, just really famous people that have come through here. And this is just a random guy that I never met before that day talking about vending machines. And it just went to the roof.

[Katherine Arnst]

And I recorded 200 teaching videos. My marketing team said, keep them short. Like, they're like a million and a half. And it was really to teach people algae for brain health, algae for gut health, algae for longevity. And it was truly to teach people. Turns out people love those videos. Some of them had like 3 million views on TikTok. So one of my team was in Italy recently, and they were on the beach, and person beside them pulls out one of our pouches of, you know, in Italy, for God's sakes. And it's like, are you kidding me? And apparently the person was from New York and they'd seen the.

[John Gafford]

We're traveling with it.

[Katherine Arnst]

And we're traveling with it. So anyway, so what's. The podcasts were our number one for sure.

[John Gafford]

What's the recapture rate on clients that buy once?

[Katherine Arnst]

Oh, man, we're off the charts. Yeah. Because once you start taking this, you feel so good, you never want to stop. And it replaces food, it replaces vegetables. Your. Your grocery bill goes down, you don't have to buy as many supplements. So we have like, subscription programs. So people get automated shipments so they don't have to buy it all the time. Most people buy every couple of months. Both. Both bags, because one is. They're different. The spirulina gives you nourishment, is good for brain health, focus, protects you from mitochondrial damage. So it's really good for longevity. And chlorella, which is recovery bits, pulls out toxins, builds your immune system, saves you from hangovers and all that sort of stuff. You know, they use both.

[John Gafford]

It's funny, somebody asked me the other day because I started somebody, I started something. And I think you get to a point with this. And I think I'm at this point now, I got to figure this out. I'm trying. Like, I take so much stuff. Yeah, like, so much stuff.

[Katherine Arnst]

You don't know which one's working.

[John Gafford]

I don't. Like, like, some. Like, I started. What was the. I mean, I'm on, like three different peptides. I've got all this other stuff. I take NAD Plus. I mean, I take all of this stuff. People like, you know what's working? I'm like, honestly, I don't know. Like, my blood keeps coming back good and I feel pretty good. And when my blood gets a little weird, then we'll adjust some off of this and some on that to.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, I'm going to give you challenge. I'm going to suggest you take. You get off almost everything and just take. But you'll need to take 30 spirulina and I'll send you more 30 chlorella for a month and then get your blood tested. Because all of those things, like NAD doesn't work unless you have a precursor number one. And all these things are to protect your mitochondria. There is nothing in the world. Nothing. Nothing. I'm going to say that again, then. That protects your mitochondria, like an antioxidant called superoxide dismutase, which your body makes for you from the moment you're born. But by the time you hit 30, it slows down. By the time you hit 40, you have none. And so what does superoxide dismutase do?

[John Gafford]

It's been a minute since I've had it.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it stops the free radical damage of your mitochondria. That's what all these other things are trying to do. It does it automatically. I tell people it's like a big golf umbrella because when you generate cellular energy, which the mitochondria is what. That's what they do. A byproduct of free radicals. It's just the way it is. So when you have this stuff called superoxide dismutase, which is also known as sod, it's like a big golf umbrella. When you pop one of those big golf umbrellas out when you're golfing or shopping, it doesn. Saved. You're not. You don't get wet.

[John Gafford]

No.

[Katherine Arnst]

You haven't stopped the rain, but you're not getting wet.

[John Gafford]

That's right.

[Katherine Arnst]

Superoxidis mutase doesn't stop the free radicals, but it turns them into harmless water and oxygen, so they don't damage the mitochondria. Problem Solved. You don't need all that other stuff. And there's other, you know, aspects to it.

[John Gafford]

But I'm sure, I'm sure at this point, you've had people like, here's blood work A, here's blood work B, oh.

[Katherine Arnst]

We'Ve had people send us their. Their lab tests from having cancer, and they were given two weeks to. To. To live, and they started taking this stuff and they're still living. And it didn't take long, like within days, their lab tests. It's just crazy what this stuff does. And it doesn't naturally, but the superoxide dismutase your body just stops making it just like for. It stops hormones, it stops melatonin, and there is no food, no supplement with superoxide dismutase in it. And there's 25,000 studies proving that superoxide reduces inflammation, protects mitochondria, prevents Alzheimer's, prevents heart disease. 25,000. You can't. But nobody knows you can find it in spirulina.

[John Gafford]

Let me ask you that. But let's get on the rabbit hole a little bit. We're going to put our tinfoil hats on because we talked about COVID earlier. Right, we talked about that. And I've, like, I've had a handful of friends that were really healthy dudes drop dead in the last couple years.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah.

[John Gafford]

Do you think that. I mean, obviously we're not going to get deep in the science of it, but some of the stuff that was maybe in those vaccines is causing some weird stuff. Stuff.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah.

[John Gafford]

And that, that's, that's honestly why I've. I've gone like crazy with all of this stuff. I'm like, whoa. Like, that dude was super healthy. I know he worked out every day. He was the same age, went on a walk with his kids and dropped out on a beach. That's crazy to me.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah.

[John Gafford]

And so I'm trying to do everything I can to avoid that. Do you. I mean, obviously, I don't know.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, first of all, with vaccines, I.

[John Gafford]

Don'T know where I'm trying to go with that question.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, I will say, and this is another big push, and I have to say, say I need people to know it's not algae that's doing this. All these wonderful things. It's for you. It's the nutrients found in algae that are proven in science. So I always have to let people know. I'm educating them on science that exists and it's the nutrients. But the nutrients that are in algae aren't available anywhere else. Like chlorophyll. There's virtually no chlorophyll in our food. But yet chlorophyll builds your blood and is the same chemical composition virtually as your blood. So that's number one one. But also in chlorella, which is the. It pulls out heavy metals. What's in vaccines. Heavy metals, like aluminum, number one.

[John Gafford]

Driver of Alzheimer's, head of.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yes, aluminum. All these metals.

[John Gafford]

That's. What is it. You can't.

[Katherine Arnst]

Your body can't process people if they have to give vaccines to their children. And it breaks my heart. Please take the chlorella for a week before and certainly a week after, probably somewhere between 15 and 30 a day, because it will pull out those metals and at least we can alleviate or diminish the likelihood of autism. 1 in 12 children in California are getting autism.

[John Gafford]

Crazy.

[Katherine Arnst]

It's just. And by the way, if you have autistic children, spirulina is really terrific. Anyone on the spectrum? Because what it does for your brain. So on the COVID thing, I don't know enough about the science of COVID but the two, they. Let me tell you this. There was this paper that was written and released, released in the summer of this year, so 2025. And it was done, I believe, in Israel. I can send it to you if you want. And it was a study done during the COVID period. And the patients that were checking into hospitals were given the standard Covid treatment. Half of them. The other half were given the standard Covid treatment and spirulina.

[John Gafford]

Okay.

[Katherine Arnst]

The patients that were given the standard treatment with spirulina, not a single one died. And they were all left the hospital without any illness. They were never put on ventilators. Never. And the death rate of the ones with just the standard care, no spirulina, the mortality rate was off the charts. Off the charts, right?

[John Gafford]

Yeah.

[Katherine Arnst]

So a couple things that happen when, with the COVID is that the viruses attacked your blood because what it. People were dying because their heart was stopping, because they weren't getting oxygen. And so the virus and anything that's acidic, what it does is it strips off the negative charge. I know we're getting deep here. Your hemoglobin, which are your red blood cells, okay, they have a negative charge around them. If you ever held a magnet up, you know how it repels one another? Well, your blood's like that, has a negative charge, so they won't clump. But the COVID virus stripped off the negative charge. They clumped, which meant. Meant they couldn't Carry. They were distorted, so they couldn't carry the iron, the oxygen inside, which is what they do. So you were getting less oxygen. They couldn't get to where they needed to go because they were so big. That was one of the impacts of COVID It caused the. The damage of oxygen to be carried prevented oxygen be carried to your core, your core organs, and the heart was the first one usually to go. So this. And algae is the most alkaline food in the world, and it restores the negative charge to the hemoglobin. So that's one of the reasons why, I think, the patients that were given the spirulina in the hospital during this test restored the negative charge so the oxygen could be delivered to the organs again and help the patient heal faster.

[John Gafford]

All right, well, let me tell you some of my ailments, and you tell me which one of those tens is.

[Katherine Arnst]

Going to help me.

[John Gafford]

Ready?

[Katherine Arnst]

All right, I'm standing by.

[John Gafford]

Oh, yeah. You got it right? Yeah. One of the things. One of the things I struggle with, my blood always comes back. I have high hed. So always. I have very, very viscous blood. I have to get blood every two months to keep myself straight. Like a guy comes to the office and sucks it out of me.

[Katherine Arnst]

It's great. Yeah.

[John Gafford]

But I always have high hemigret. Anything in there that's going to help me with that viscosity of my blood.

[Katherine Arnst]

There's. There's a great book I'd love you to read. It's called something about the cure. It. And. And that is often caused by too much or not enough active. Oh, is it zinc? I'll have to get you more. More. Marley. Marley War. I have to get the name of it. But I don't. I don't know enough about that.

[John Gafford]

About that thing to do this. Okay, that's cool. All right. Insulin sensitivity. Which one of those is helping with that?

[Katherine Arnst]

Spirulina.

[John Gafford]

Spirulina, absolutely. Insulin sensitivity, yes. Have you seen people. Because, like, I'm not. I'm not diabetic. But, you know, I always. I'm. My parents both work, so I always am very concerned about that. Have you seen people that were on the spectrum for diabetes who started this?

[Katherine Arnst]

We even were part of a movie called Reverse. They took diabetic patients, diabetic, diabetes, too, to, I think, the Dominican Republic. And they fed them a keto diet, our algae, both spirit. And they made them exercise every day. Everything. Within 30 days, every single one of them reversed their diabetes. Diabetes, too. This is unbelievable. For diabetics Insulin insensitivity. Because this balances your blood sugar. Absolutely balances your blood sugar.

[John Gafford]

How many of those a day to bounce your blood sugar?

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, for any therapeutic purposes, 30 a day would be.

[John Gafford]

Because, like, I'm on. I'm on. I think. I think to about. I think for the insulin sensitivity. I think it's. Oh, God. Here, I can.

[Katherine Arnst]

But here's the great.

[John Gafford]

I don't have to guess. I can. I could. Well, okay, let's go. Let's just go.

[Katherine Arnst]

So here's what's going to happen.

[John Gafford]

We're going to go through my supplement. Listen, you tell me what you think I can get rid of.

[Katherine Arnst]

How's that? All right. But when you take 30, this is.

[John Gafford]

Okay, I gotta tell people home something. See, if you get a podcast and then you have really smart people on. You don't have to pay for doctors. You just have them in here and you just. Here's what else.

[Katherine Arnst]

You may take it for instance. City. But you know what's going to happen? Your hair is going to go better. Your skin's going to look. Okay.

[John Gafford]

So here's what I'm on. You ready? Obviously, you said the multivitamin. You said that was it.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah.

[John Gafford]

D3. 3. K2.

[Katherine Arnst]

Get rid of it because there's K2. Your daily requirement of K2 is in both.

[John Gafford]

Is in both of those. Okay. Fish oil. I'm on that. Obviously.

[Katherine Arnst]

Get rid of that. You already mentioned spirulina for the fish oil.

[John Gafford]

Okay. Alpha, alpha, alpha, ala. Yeah, spirulina for that. Okay. Chromium picolinate.

[Katherine Arnst]

I don't know that one.

[John Gafford]

All right. Flush. Free niacin.

[Katherine Arnst]

Niacin. It's got the highest. Niacin. Spirulina.

[John Gafford]

All right.

[Katherine Arnst]

Berberine bourbon. You don't need bourbon because you get.

[John Gafford]

I got that. And I take cordycet mushrooms. That's the a.m. okay.

[Katherine Arnst]

Okay. Yeah, yeah, mushrooms are great.

[John Gafford]

Yeah. PM is more of that stuff. Magnesium glycinate.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, they don't need magnesium. And I would take chlorella in the evening because this helps with your sleep bowel movements.

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[Katherine Arnst]

See, you don't need either one. Spirulina.

[John Gafford]

All right. Glycerin. Glycine.

[Katherine Arnst]

Glycine. I'd say spirulina.

[John Gafford]

Curcumin.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, curcumin. You know, I have to say, I like curcumin.

[John Gafford]

Okay, that was good for me. I keep that one.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, you can eat that one.

[John Gafford]

Resveratrol. Resveratrol.

[Katherine Arnst]

I don't need that one. No, I'd say spirulina. Yeah, yeah, here's the one I was thinking of.

[John Gafford]

Bergamot extract. That's what I'm using to keep extract. Bergamot extract. Citrus bergamot.

[Katherine Arnst]

I don't know about that one. What is that? What do you take that for?

[John Gafford]

That's supposed to, that's supposed to. For help with insulin sensitivity.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, then if it's insulin sensitivity, that's what this is. Is. Yeah.

[John Gafford]

Astragalus.

[Katherine Arnst]

Astragalus. Is that a, Is that a mushroom?

[John Gafford]

That's, I think I, I think it's a mushroom.

[Katherine Arnst]

I think it's a. I don't know what it is. You know, I, I, I, I, I always defer to my food friends.

[John Gafford]

Yeah, no, no. Yeah, this is, no, this, this is like I eat all this every day. It's crazy, right?

[Katherine Arnst]

I don't need it. If you understand what you're taking it for. If, if, if Astragalus, I think, is for brain health.

[John Gafford]

I think so.

[Katherine Arnst]

So that would be spirulina. There's a great book by the name of Dr. Chris Palmer. He's a psychiatrist and also on at the medical school at Harvard. And his book is called Brain Energy. And he talks about how every single brain issue doesn't matter whether it's depression, post traumatic stress disorder, post pregnancy disorder. Everything comes down to mitochondria damage. And spirulina has the nutrients that protect and restore your mitochondria. Because your brain has the most mitochondria in your body. There's 2 million per cell. So the first thing that will improve when you heal your mitochondria is your brain, Brain function. So whether it's your mood, your depression, brain fog. When women suffer from brain fog more than men.

[John Gafford]

Because my wife bought up. My wife battles that like a fiend.

[Katherine Arnst]

Okay, well, she needs spirulina. Here's why. Because everybody loses that stuff called superoxide dismutase when they're 40 and 50, which is causing your mitochondria to die, which means you have less energy. It's like in a building because you're in real estate. In a building. In a building. How do you do work? Well, you need lights to do work, right. So think of your mitochondria as the lights in your building. Now in a building, when you're, you have a power shortage or the lights go out, you call maintenance and they restore everything. Well, superoxide dismisses your maintenance because when in your body, when your mitochondria, because they generate, they are the lights and the electricity. And so when they die or get damaged, you just have less lights, you just have less power. You can't do much of anything. And it just gets worse and worse and worse. And women suffer more because. Because at the same time their superoxide dismutase is dropping, they're losing estrogen and nobody knows. But estrogen also is an antioxidant for your mitochondria. So women get twice hit twice as hard. And again, your brain has the most mitochondria, so the brain suffers more in women. That's why they have more Alzheimer's, right? Yeah.

[John Gafford]

So my wife has the Apoc4 genes, so she's got both cursors for it.

[Katherine Arnst]

Okay. So you have to know that genes are like a, a blueprint, an architect's blueprint. And my sister and her husband, both architects. Now you may decide to change your plans and instead of having a two bedroom, maybe you're going to have a five bedroom. So what you build may not necessarily actually look like the blueprint. Your genes are the blueprint. The thing that impacts your genes is your lifestyle. 98% of illness is because of environmental, it's called epigenetic influences. Your stress levels, your toxic load, your nutritional load, your level of exercise and all that sort of stuff.

[John Gafford]

The day she, the day she found out she had those genes, like no more aluminum in the deodorant, no more aluminum pans, no more anything. I mean like, yeah, this is now 13 years ago. She just had, she went and had all of her like her arteries and her heart checked, all that stuff. There's no calcium build up in her head right now.

[Katherine Arnst]

Nice.

[John Gafford]

So she's got no K2 will get.

[Katherine Arnst]

Rid of that if there wasn't.

[John Gafford]

Yeah.

[Katherine Arnst]

Which is great.

[John Gafford]

So let me ask you one more question about this.

[Katherine Arnst]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Gafford]

Which is if obviously this is doing incredibly well, you guys are built an amazing company. If you go back and do one thing different, what would it be?

[Katherine Arnst]

What would I do differently?

[John Gafford]

Besides not bring yourself, not be as.

[Katherine Arnst]

Stressed about the outcome, Just have more faith that I would get there because it was very, very stressful.

[John Gafford]

But even in the fear though, isn't that you look back at it and that was the fun part.

[Katherine Arnst]

Well, well, you know, for a year I couldn't move my neck because I was so strained. At one point my face was literally bleeding because of the stress. The stress. I never missed a Payrol. I didn't pay myself for 10 years. That's another sort of horror story of being an entrepreneur. But I put it all into my team, into the company. I do pay myself quite generously now, but that it would just be less fear and trusting that I was doing the right thing. I knew I was, but it was, it was nerve wracking and I, you know, I didn't have a partner and I'm single.

[John Gafford]

You had to do it.

[Katherine Arnst]

So anyways, that would be it.

[John Gafford]

Well, if they want to find this, where do they find it? How do they get it?

[Katherine Arnst]

Energybits.come n e R G Y B for boy I t for tom ts energybits.com we do have a 20% discount code drift. Drift get you 20% off anything. We have big bags of the best value. They have fun canisters that you can shake the tablets out. By the way, with the discount code. If you buy the large bag, it's normally 130, it comes down to 140. I just want people to know that if you do start with 10 tablets and use that discount code drift. 10 tablets cost you a dollar a day. That's not a dollar a day. Right. It's a cup of coffee. 30 is your, the, you can't, you can't get a cup of co. Where are you getting your coffee?

[John Gafford]

That's where I get my coffee.

[Katherine Arnst]

Like right.

[John Gafford]

Black coffee. They poured into my hands for a dollar. That's what I get.

[Katherine Arnst]

So it's very affordable and the, the outcomes are unbelievable and you have to remember it's food. But, and I want people to know algae isn't new, it's just new to you. Yeah. And no one's explained it to you or given you a high quality product?

[John Gafford]

Well, perfect.

[Katherine Arnst]

So, so trust it.

[John Gafford]

Katherine, thanks for coming in. It was lovely to meet you and this is an awesome product and I wish you nothing but the best. And if you're listening to this at home and a, go check this stuff out. But B, you know, if you take nothing away from that whole story, take this away. If you really want long term success, you gotta be willing to give up a lot in the moment and struggle and suffer and stress to get the life you want. It's not easy, but it is worth it. We'll see you next time. What's up, everybody? Thanks for joining us for another episode of Escaping the Drift. Hope you got a bunch out of it, or at least as much as I did out of it. Anyway, if you want to learn more about the show, you can always go over to escaping the drift.com you can join our mailing list. But do me a favor, if you wouldn't mind, throw up that five star review, give us a share. Do something, man. We're here for you. Hopefully you'll be here for us. But anyway, in the meantime, we will see you at the next episode.