From Soviet Refugee to Water Queen: Jane Emma’s American Dream

Water is foundational to everything. So just in the last 30 years, thousands of additional chemicals have been introduced into the environment and therefore find their way into our water. By the time you've started and stopped your day, you've interacted with water easily over 25 times. And I guarantee you, you'd never even notice it.

Wow.

There's a difference between the land of opportunity and the land of results. We're living in such a victimhood mentality time right now where everybody is vying to be more offended than the next. And I don't understand this. Like just get up and go work or get up and change your circumstance. But this boo-hoo is like it's too much.

Jane Emma, welcome to the Pathway to Peak Performance, the first episode of season 2. Thank you so much for being here and coming all the way up from San Diego, California. So great to have you in, my friend.

Thank you so much for having me.

Awesome. Okay. So, your charity is Charity Water.

Yes.

What a phenomenal organization.

It's incredible. I mean, I think that, you know, bringing what as I mentioned before earlier off the air that, you know, we have a lot to say about the United States water quality and there's definitely things that we need to be concerned with, but it is a huge, huge privilege to be able to just turn on the tap even if it's not ideal and have running water there. So, I think what they're doing and helping bringing, you know, running water to communities that, you know, normally have to travel miles upon miles to do anything is really important.

For sure. I mean, it's funny. I met Scott Harrison twice last year at this time, actually, in Boston. He gave an incredible presentation. It was amazing to see just how much they've been able to do over the years. He's a phenomenal guy and that organization when you see those people having to go so far just to get like, you know, giardia-filled ponds...

Not even safe water.

It's just like... it's just incredibly, you know, you're right. It makes us incredibly grateful to be here in the United States where even though I guess the worst-case example would be something like Flint, Michigan where they've got, you know, lead in the water, right?

Yeah. I mean imperfections exist everywhere, right? But I think that, I mean, start with the basics. Yeah. At the end of the day, we're batting a thousand when it comes to water compared to many of the others.

Absolutely.

Yeah. All right. So, we're gonna express some opinions here today. Okay.

All right. These are just your opinion, right? You are a water expert and so we are going to have you go through and these are some of the waters that we see every day in the store and all over the place. Some of them are kind of obscure. We wanted to try to find something that was a little bit different since we don't have some of the water that you... you know, if we were at your house we would just go over and we would get a glass of really awesome water, but since we're not at your house and we can't do that here, we have to discuss the alternatives.

Right, which is what people are going to run into every single day.

All right, so the first one is Fiji water and it's in plastic and you know, I always wondered about Fiji water. Comes all the way from Fiji on a boat, you know, sort of filtered through all of this lava rock right to this aquifer down below and then they put it in a plastic bottle and they ship it. And I wonder, you know, it's in Fiji, so how hot is it when it's actually coming across? Who knows, right?

I mean, that's hard to tell, but I'm... you know, you definitely don't have air-conditioned containers and things like that that are happening, right? So, and then there's the shelf life and then there's bottles that sit in your car. I mean, anything plastic. Just to answer your question right off the bat, these three right here, I just wouldn't recommend right out the gate.

And that's because there are microplastics in all of them.

Microplastics, nanoplastics, because even the microplastics start to break down past the micro size. It becomes even smaller. So, it's just, you know, there's a lot to be concerned with. But I also think that, you know, with some of these brands, with a lot of them, you'll have, you know, okay, this is natural spring water, but I don't know if you guys have tried this really, but this is my least favorite. Like these two are my absolute least favorite just out of taste.

Personally, now Smart Water also, okay, it's distilled water and then they add minerals to it for taste. So, you'll never see a bottle ad say, "Oh, we added minerals because it's so important for your health and it's actually what helps contribute to things like cellular hydration." You know, I see this everywhere, especially with the electrolyte packets. So that's what minerals and electrolytes are used for, to help you hydrate better. This boxed water is just purified, so there's no minerals in here whatsoever. And so what happens with just purified—and this is actually what a lot of people find a problem is with reverse osmosis which we'll talk about a little bit later—but RO to me is like a step one. You just you can't stop there. But if you're not drinking water that has minerals in it, your body is going to find a way to reach that equilibrium and it's going to donate those minerals. So over time you don't want to just...

So you're leaching that from like your bones or something.

Yeah. Exactly.

Okay. Wow.

It could be dehydrating you even more because it's trying to balance things out, right? There's the aquaporin channels in our cells. And so the calcium, magnesium... and a lot of people don't know this, like just because there's calcium magnesium in your bottled water, what is the ratio of calcium and magnesium? Specifically, those two because you need two calcium and one magnesium for that transport system to work effectively.

Wow.

So, it matters the balance. It matters the source. So, what kind of minerals are they putting in here? Right? Like we'll dive into it, but we have natural coral that we're sourcing our minerals for for our water. Um, so anyway, so that's the purified. I will say when you're out and about, pretty much this all the way on is going to be like your best bet because look, as much as I love my water and truly I cannot live without it, traveling is very difficult for me. But we all have to leave the house sometimes and even my ginormous jug, I run out of water sometimes, right? So you have to stop and get it. So making sure that whatever your water is being stored in is not in plastic and preferably not plastic-lined like this.

Yeah. So I mean, what's the story like that boxed water has got a plastic on the inside anyway, right? So the whole idea there is, "Oh, you know, we're more environmentally friendly," but there's still... I mean, how do you recycle that? They don't even do it right.

They don't. No, everybody's separated so that you feel morally superior in that moment and you're like, "I'm absolutely doing the right thing." And then you watch the workers of wherever you're at go ahead and pick all of that up and put it into the same thing.

Literally, we had that happen just the other day.

Yeah.

And I was just... I was kind of blown away by it, but I'd known that had been going on for a while, but it is kind of weird when you see that, to think that it's just all going into a landfill someplace.

I mean, it's a bummer. Well, but because also not all plastic is recyclable and sometimes like you can recycle the bottle but you can't recycle the cap or some weird thing, you know, so the mental gymnastics to just get rid of something properly is a lot.

That's wild.

Yeah.

Okay. So, we move on into these aluminum bottles. Now, aluminum has been sort of associated... a lot of people have talked about aluminum in deodorant for example.

Well, yeah, but also having some sort of, you know, you wonder like we talk about plastics and microplastics, nanoplastics, aluminum leaching into beverages. And then there's some talk about aluminum, you know, having an effect on neurocognitive health.

Yeah.

So, you switch off of these and you start drinking a lot of this stuff. I wonder if there's any kind of effect there. Who knows, right? Nobody really knows at this point. I guess nobody... let's say we don't know for sure. Okay. But it's a good bet to kind of make an assumption that for example, the more pure your water is, the more aggressive it's going to be on whatever container. So glass, you're pretty good so far. I think that is the safest container that we have. But the more pure it is, the more aggressive it is on our plumbing or on whatever it is that it's sitting inside of. So here it does say that electrolytes, again, added for taste. So, it may not be stripping as much from here, but I'm definitely... I tread lightly. I'm not necessarily a scientist, but that would be my guess.

So, when you say it's more aggressive, that means it is that because it's just more open? There's more space for something to come in?

Yeah. It's like literally pulling. It's just leaching, kind of like it would our body. So, I get people all the time asking me like, "Well, wouldn't I want purified water all throughout my house if I want the best of the best of the best?" I'm like, uh, not really because it's like they're serving two different purposes. So, I would say that defaulting to anything glass... and I understand people are going to be like, "Well, it gets hot, you know, or whatever, warms up quickly." It's like, "Well, kind of pick your poison." Okay. Like, or finish the bottle faster, I guess.

Yeah, pick your poison. I mean, at the end of the day, you think about it, it's like, "Drink your water faster." It's funny. I'm going to do something. I'm going to cheat a little bit. So this is what I always drink when we talk about electrolytes and... and then so I sell from New BioAge is water and I always say like, "You got to put great water in there." I question the water that I put in there. At least I know that I'm hydrating with, you know, electrolytes and osmolytes and all those types of things. But, um, that's the water that I normally drink. Moving on. All right. So, we've got this bottle. Now, we're talking about glass. So, we're into these two bottles that we got that are in glass. So, this one, neither one of us have seen this.

I've never seen that. No. So, it just looks like a smaller maybe provider. Where are they actually out of? Does it even say? Out of Irvine? Okay. So, it says that it's vapor-distilled water, which it's, you know, going to be very similar to RO. It's just a different way of getting the water purified. And then again, they add minerals back for taste.

Okay. So reverse osmosis is when we purify them.

And purified and filtered are categorically different.

When you first told me that, I was like blown away by it. I was like, "What? What are you talking about?"

Because so many people use it interchangeably. And actually, so many companies use it interchangeably. And like, I... my respect drops immediately for companies that use it in the same breath. "Pure filtered water." It's either purified or it's filtered because those mechanisms are different. And the difference is actually quite tangible. Like a filtration system goes down, let's say to about like your Brittas or your standard carbon blocks, Hydro VIBs, like brands like this that maybe they go under the sink, but it's not an RO. If it's just one cartridge, it's not an RO system, which is reverse osmosis for everybody listening. But typically that goes down to about five micron whereas a reverse osmosis, like a good RO, can go down to 0.001 micron. And reverse osmosis just means that it's pulling out whatever's inside of it.

Yeah. It's like... so the cartridge itself, it's like a really tightly bound, let's say, paper cartridge. So it physically, because of the size, it cannot let in molecules that are larger than a water molecule. So things like bacteria, viruses, PFAS... I mean PFAS and stuff, it depends on the certifications of the system, that's for sure. But generally, it's going to reduce those things by default to a degree anyway. And that's, you know, if somebody's searching for what's the cleanest and what's the first step, then that's the way to go.

That's the first part. Yeah.

So, is that considered purified or is that just filtered?

That's purified.

Purified. So, when we go to reverse osmosis, we're now at a purified level. So, this is now vapor distilled. In other words, they heat it up. It steam rises to the top. Wherever it leeches off, it goes off to, that's where the purified water is.

That's right.

Okay. So, but is that purified?

Yeah.

Okay.

They're pretty similar like in terms of their... the process is different, but the effects are pretty similar.

Okay. And now what's this? Is this similar?

So, out of all the waters that you have here, I would say that Oora is my favorite, but Oora also happens to be the most expensive. So, I would say that this is probably a little bit difficult for like your kind of average household to be able to afford on a consistent basis. But the kind of claim to fame here is the hyper-oxygenated water.

How do you do that? How do you hyper-oxygenate water?

Honestly, I have been on their website many times because I have clients that ask me and I love their brand. I have nothing bad to say about that at all. I would say that it's just again it's like at a certain price point. But they've... I mean, they have this machine that just... but it's a big undertaking. Like it's a big thing in, you know, not in your house but outside.

There's also stuff like hydrogen water that you hear about now. And they just didn't have any at the store but...

Well, you can't just buy it. That's the trick right there. That's what people don't understand is that hydrogen water, its potency... like you need it. It needs to be fresh. It literally, as time goes on and every time you open it up, it's releasing more. So I see this at biohacking events all the time. It's like, "hydrogen water, hydrogen water." And I look at their technology and it's literally... I'm like, "You are taking the smallest way that you could possibly fit into this and you're blowing it up." So people are buying these things in bags like to-go bags. Have you seen it? Like the little small things or now it's small like Ziploc almost. And they buy and that's their hydrogen because Kangen is like the most successful MLM I've ever seen in my entire life. So people just think that this water is like it's like God.

So I have these little hydrogen tablets that they can put into a water...

And that's what I drink sometimes before. Not always because there's some... like there's actually some sugar in it.

Really?

Yeah. Well, in this one there's some sort of sweetener. I don't know what it is.

Interesting.

But so I use it sparingly but I do use it every once in a while.

Well, you can use it often. It's a great anti-inflammatory. I mean, it's really good for people like... I wake up with a headache sometimes. I'll throw the water into my hydrogen bottle, have some of that and I feel better almost instantly. So I'm a big fan of hydrogen water. I think that we need to break it down in a way where like you need to understand it's like a dose—like you apply it when needed. Again, I don't have that kind of background, but from what I've heard, you don't need to be drinking it at all times all throughout the day. It's a selective antioxidant. It's very powerful. Very no negative impact that we have seen so far that I have personally read about. So it's great but you have to start with the purification. You got to remineralize. You got to structure and then you have your to-go bottle for example or your tabs which I'm a fan of actually because it gives you flexibility when you're flying. It gives you flexibility a lot more than like having the bottle ready to go. So, if you're flying, you go through like TSA and you don't have a bottle like that where you carry your own like Hydro Flask or Swell bottle or whatever it might be and you have to buy one of those and you see those in the airports now and you can fill up at the stations. I wanted to ask you what is the story with like when you go to the gym and you see those products like LK? You go up and it's like you fill up your wild water.

It's a filter.

It's just a filter.

So, it's taking care of your chlorine. Certainly, it's going to take care of some level of chlorine byproduct. It will likely not tackle chloramine and those are two separate things. So municipalities, we all started with chlorine. So all started in New Jersey actually. And we're very grateful for chlorine, right? It's not like the ultimate enemy, but there are things that we are learning now that it, you know, there's byproducts associated with all that. But not all carbon filters can handle chloramine, which is chlorine and ammonia mixed together. And the reason why cities are starting to switch over is because it's cheaper and it lasts longer in the lines. So, especially in like hotter climates, we were talking about Houston for example, right? Like you really have to be like pumping more, which for the person that's at the front of that delivery system, that's like a lot, but they need to make sure that it's not going to evaporate, you know, to the point where potentially there's like bacteria and all of that kind of stuff. And the South is like notorious for boil advisories, you know, so it's an issue.

Now, people are going to be like looking when they go to look buy a home, they're going to be like, "Oh, I want to be the furthest away from the water treatment facility I can possibly be." Right.

Yeah, or just get the best filtrations.

There you go. The Good For Company.

Yeah, exactly.

I just call you. Okay, so we're gonna do something here. So the sponsor of our show is... I know you use ketones. You don't use these. We're going to get you hooked.

No, I'm going to switch over. I'm happy to.

Are you good? Because these I'm going to tell you this is the real deal. So this is K2. The other product is K4 and they have some other like ketone shots, but this is K2. See how you like the taste. I actually... take a taste like... Well, I'm not going to...

Don't put it in my... Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let me experience.

I'm not going to lead you. So, what we're going to do is you can see here you're going to pop the top.

Okay.

And put in... Let's do four. Since you use a different ketone product, I think it'd be interesting to see what happens when you put four capfuls in. And put it in that one and this one.

She just goes wild.

Yeah. And all of a sudden, woo. And we're going to use the water that you think is the right water. Right. We'll actually put some water in just to kind of make it easier to drink. All right, guys. Here we go. What is it? V Ketone.

Yeah, it's a Vich Ketone Ester. So, it's like the... it's the real deal.

Okay, we like real deal.

We're going to see how we feel about 20-30 minutes from now.

Okay, we're going to compare mental sharpness, guys. That's the thing about this: it's a great pre-workout, great endurance, and then also for those... well, I mean, admittedly, I use this every day. So, I'm probably one of those guys that is just doing it. All right, so we've got this, and now let's put some... I'll have you pour a little bit of water in that for us.

It's like what? Halfway?

Uh, that's good. Yeah, that's good. Yeah. Okay, perfect. All right, so cheers.

All right. Cheers. What do you think?

So good. You know what's great? I actually I've just come to like love them. I don't know what it is. It's just...

Well, I think it's...

It's really weird. I have my matcha over here. And I had this and I just think that the tastes are just too conflicting for my...

It's kind of confounding, right? I really tell people to really look into KetoneAid because it is a true... it is the true thing. The other stuff is probably not it.

Well, now we're ready.

Here we go. Let's start the timer. Okay. I just want to make sure we're going to let... check it like 20 minutes and then like at 30 minutes. Jane, how did you get involved with water? What was the whole idea behind all of the sudden you're like, "Hey, I've got to find the best water possible"?

Pregnancy, frustration, and just deciding that I was going to do it better. So, I was pregnant with my daughter. I was 25. My life categorically changed. I went from like, you know, living like I'm free, you know, to really having to think about all of the things right away. And so, my husband was already... he had a contracting company, very successful one in Canada. That's where we were at the time. And some of their clients were water treatment companies. So I was like, "Oh, what is this? Why?" So I had some of their reps come over just so we can review it. And I hated the entire process. I was like, "Why do I feel like I'm asking you questions that you don't have answers to, shoving the sale down my throat?" I mean, it was just like your very standard type of process, you know?

And I don't want to knock age because I think anybody that wants to be successful can do so at any age, but you have these kids coming over and like, I have specific concerns, right? I'm talking about like, "Well, what does chlorine do? Why do I need to remove it? Didn't we need it in the water?" Things like that. And it was just like, "Oh well, it's just better for you and like, sign here on the line." So that was a frustrating experience. And I had to do a bunch of my own research and it's like the rabbit hole that I've yet to climb out of essentially. And so when I realized that there was so much... I didn't know the word for this back then to be honest, but greenwashing and so much dishonest and playful marketing tactics in it. I was like, "Okay, what we need to do is understand the problem."

And I'm like a ADHD. So when I start researching things, I research... and then you just keep going down these pathways. You're like, "Oh my god," you know? So fast forward, you know, 8 years later and here we are.

So yeah, it is kind of confusing where you're just sort of like, "What is it?" Like, I remember just all the years of traveling, right? Just being in airports and like trying to, you know, get the water and you know, you're on the road and it's like whatever you can get and oftentimes like it'd be like this... it's like they're big multinational companies and it's like, uh, like it's kind of scary. And then I found out that some of the stuff that they put into the water actually makes it... does what you said, it makes you thirstier. It sort of has an opposite effect. So why in the world are we doing it? It's like... I think it's sort of nuts. And so it is really confusing.

I think that's one of the things that's really interesting about what you're doing is you're helping people to see that there is a better way to get water into your home. And now I have a daughter. She's going to be 20 next month. She's going to be a junior in college and she likes to just sort of, you know, push it in my face like she's drinking tap water. I was like, "Don't do that. Don't do that." And she makes a big deal out of it. She actually says it's no different than what's in that bottle. She says it's no different than what's in that plastic bottle. And admittedly, you know, and my wife said to me this morning, she's like, "You know, she was excited that you were coming because she's like, 'Yeah, you know what? Actually, this environmental waste that we've got, this environmental trail that we've got is terrible and we've got to stop this.'" And so she's super excited.

Well, hopefully your daughter will listen to this episode and maybe she can DM me and ask me additional questions because I have this battle with my kids. I mean, not about water, but about other things like foods... like we walk around with the scanner, you know? So, even organic things, I'm like, "No, let's scan it. Look at the rating. 40 out of 100." And then they're like, "Why is it so low?" You know, things like that for foods, right?

Whoa, really? I didn't even know about this.

Well, okay. So, I don't... I mean, I don't shop at traditional grocery stores as much as possible. Now in San Diego, we have a place called Jimbo's, which is amazing. And it's like the ultimate gear for farmers markets. They bring it all. They bring it all. Yeah. And very local. Like, you know, you'll have local strawberries and like all the things. And they're very... actually they were the one grocery store that was like, "We will discontinue you if you're using Apeel on organic produce." And that was a big thing because Whole Foods did not make that distinction. Whole Foods could care less.

Apeel is the stuff they sprayed on it to make it last longer. So it's like nicer longer, right? You didn't have the pesticides to keep the insects away from it, but then you put the stuff on it, it's like sealing it with like a plastic or something, right? I don't know. I don't know what it is, but kind of crazy.

Well, it's not natural. Let's just start there, right? And so, I think we're also hyperfocused on like having beautiful foods, but like, I don't know.

Well, here's what we do know, right? A pear doesn't grow on a tree and have a peel just sort of...

Correct. Right. Yes. There you go. That's enough.

That's the point.

Exactly. Okay, cool. So, yeah, you're scanning all these things. You're with your kids and you help them to understand that. So, hopefully my daughter will DM you and ask you those questions because I always go, "Gosh, you know, I wonder just how bad the tap water actually is, how far it has to travel," and all those types of things that...

I mean, the infrastructure is declining rapidly. We all know how long it takes for the government—any government, I'm not making this political, I'm just saying any bureaucracy period—there's a lot of red tape. There's a lot of opinions. There's a lot of, "We got to do this, do this, do that." So, by the time we're all waiting for some sort of change and improvement, like, you are taking on that hit. So, I get people all the time like, "They should fix this," and, "They should," and I ask them, "Well, who is 'they'?" I'm just wondering because if you keep waiting for "they," it'll never happen. So for me it's just really important for my kids.

Like, marketing... there's just not enough regulations on marketing because we're also in America and free speech and all the things, and so it's just a weird area, right? So you can get away with labeling something organic or even all natural when it's not actually all natural. So that scanning app, I think it's called Yuka. Y-U-K-A, I believe. Yuka, something like that. We'll put it in the show notes. We'll find it and I'll pull it up for you guys. But it's really great. So if you're a parent that's struggling and having your kids eye-roll at you all the time like I am... "Why can't we have Oreos?" "Because I want to have grandchildren one day." Like, that's what I answer. I'm like, "Because I cannot pump you full of chemicals. I just can't do it."

You know, I'm an immigrant. I grew up on whole foods. We didn't have money to be unhealthy. And I'm so grateful for that. Like, so grateful. So whole foods, home-cooked, you know, going out to get something was like an occasional thing. Whereas now we're having all of our foods delivered in hot black plastic and then we're reheating things and whatever. So at every step of our process—from the water to our soil to our food to our packaging—the nutrients... and this kind of full circle to the mineral portion... we're just... our nutrition is not the same as it was 50 years ago. And our water is not the same as it was 50 years ago.

Because I get this argument, too. People are like, "Well, I grew up drinking out of the side of the hose, you know, at grandma's house, and I'm totally fine." And some people are totally fine and some are like missing all their teeth and they're heavily overweight and they've got four different cancers. I'm like, "I don't really understand what your level of 'totally fine' is. Where is your benchmark? We should raise that." You know, most of the chemicals that are in circulation weren't in circulation then. So just in the last 30 years, about thousands of additional chemicals have been introduced into the environment and therefore find their way into our water.

So your daughter is kind of partially, you know... I understand where she's like, "Oh, it might be the same because of the microplastics," and microplastics are endocrine disruptors and, gosh, there's just so many people battling infertility, right? Drop in testosterone. Like you have... I mean some people talk about how like men are becoming a little bit more feminine. We're talking about the atrazine. I don't even... I'm not talking about like what you identify as, but I'm talking about like actual real things. So, atrazine for example, you know what it does? Okay, so atrazine turned a male frog into a female. They did a study and atrazine is a pesticide. So, you know...

What do they put it on?

Crops, food.

Any kind of food?

Well, okay. I'll be honest. I don't want to... maybe not any kind of food. Maybe it's specific.

Yeah. I just want to make sure I don't eat any of that.

Well, eat organic as much as possible, you know.

Yeah, here's the problem. You know, it's like... well, I'm not going to name the airline that I fly all the time. You're going to find yourself on a, you know, in a hotel where it's late at night, you got to get something to eat. You're on an airplane, you ran to get to the airplane, you're going to eat what's there because you're starving. You didn't have enough. You didn't pack enough. You didn't whatever. I think all the years of traveling, I'm probably full of forever chemicals and all sorts of those things that came out of grandma's hose. And I'm just trying to find my way back, Jane. I'm just trying to find...

Hey. Well, I think first of all, you know what the first step to health is? Reducing stress. So, I will say that we can be freaking out about water quality and we can be freaking out about the state of the economy and about literally everything if you really, really want to, but the most important part—like the most important—is peace inside. And as much as that might sound woo-woo or hopefully it doesn't to most people that are listening, but like, that is like step one. And then deal with things as you can.

So you don't go like swinging the pendulum from like, "I don't care at all about any of the health," to all of a sudden like, "Now I have to fix all the problems." Start with fundamentals. How many people start their day by staring into the screen first thing instead of putting their eyeballs to the window and like, getting the sun? Because as soon as I realized how important light is to our circadian rhythm and how important it is to our water body... because the sun and our interaction with the sun is what actually helps create naturally structured water in our body.

Like, structured water—and we'll get into that, right?—but that's part of what we do. Structured water that mimics spring water in terms of its frequency... like, we have all of that, all of our water-loving surfaces in our body. Okay, so the cell membrane, all of that kind of stuff, that's all impacted by structured or EZ water, exclusionary zone water. And so the more that you can naturally interact with natural light and put your feet on the ground so that you're, you know, getting charged up or negatively charging anyway, all of that is building things up naturally in your body. So, you know, again, I mentioned I go to a lot of these biohacking events and things like that and there's all these really cool gadgets and I totally get it, I love looking at all the things, but it's just so funny how many people like, forget the nearly free basic things and they don't do those things. So, that's where I encourage people to start is really with the free stuff.

That's a brilliant sort of thought process, right? Start where you can.

Build from there.

Yeah. And then let's get on to The Good For Company because I want to hear about structured water. I want to hear about all of these things and how you use natural coral to actually provide the minerals because there's some other stuff that's out there that's sort of... people made claims are sort of similar but one...

For structuring.

Yeah. And I don't really... I don't know anything about it so I don't really want to get into it but the bottom line, you're the expert. I'm not. So let's talk about what it is exactly that you do. So just to kind of replay, you got to this point in time where you said, "Hey, none of this makes sense." Your pathway to peak performance was to do what? What was the next step?

We took a little bit of a route. So I was... so I got into it because I needed to get my own sort of clarity. And but at the time we were in Canada and still like, my husband was focused on his contracting company, I was raising kids but also we were working together. We still work together now, but we were just doing contracting. And so when we came down to Texas because I was done with the Toronto cold—oh my gosh, I was like, "Get me out of here. It's like 8 months of the year it's cold and it sucks and I don't want to do this anymore"—so we left, went to Houston, had a great starting opportunity there.

And when I got there, I was like, "I am obsessed with this," because the more that I was learning, the more I was like, so many people are not answering questions properly or just flat out they don't understand the problem. And while I can't... I don't talk in absolutes and I'm always a student of life, you know, and I'm always learning, but there are certain things that we know for sure. So I wanted to focus on it. I feel very passionately about it. So The Good For Company was born in Texas in 2018.

And I honestly in the beginning we really started out with, again, it was like all kind of relative to my understanding and my knowledge. And so we started out with just high-performance filtration and purification. Filtration for a whole home and then purification targeted under your sink for drinking water and cooking water. And we'll get into why those two things are, you know, different applications.

Can I take a guess? Yeah, I... at the risk of sounding like a [ __ ]... I think like the filtration portion is just to get the chlorine and/or the chloramine...

Chlorine and byproducts. Yeah.

Out of the shower portion, right? Because you don't want to absorb all that stuff as you're taking a shower.

Or breathe it in, because that's another thing that people don't think about. So, because I also have a little bit of a plumbing background, right? So the mixing valve is right behind your shower. So you have your cold line, your hot line, and then that combustion... I mean, it happens right before it reaches you essentially, right? It's not it's not warm at the start like from the hot water tank. You have your mixing valves and so when that cold mixes with the hot and it creates that... it literally it's the most chaotic moment and then it's coming directly through your shower and you're breathing this stuff in.

And one of the craziest statistics that I have ever read was that 53% of women that had breast cancer had higher levels of chlorine concentration in their breast tissue. So I just found... you know, when we take our kids out of the pool, we wash them off. If we don't have a filter, you're also... hopefully less chlorine, unless you're in Chicago. I was there middle of last year and I turned on the faucet and I literally felt like I was at a city swimming pool.

You could smell it.

Oh, I was disgusted. I brought my filters with me, my shower filter. But I really try to travel with it as much as possible because I just... I'm very picky about my water now. But the point is this: that it's very overwhelming. There's a lot of chlorine and chloramine in the water that, you know, we really have to get rid of.

Chloramine. So that's the ammonia.

So yeah, chloramine. So municipalities started with chlorine. And then they needed a solution that was... I don't know if it was only budget-driven. 99% of the time it's budget-driven. Okay. But it also lasts longer in the line. So chloramine is chlorine and ammonia mixed together. And so I wouldn't say that we have a lot of data out there on like the effects of chloramine, but I think it's safe to say that it certainly can't be better than chlorine. And your traditional filters cannot deal with chloramine. It is a more difficult thing to get out of your water.

So what we specialize in is high-performance filtration and optimization. So the high performance comes from kind of three pieces. We focus on certification. So everything that we deal with outside of my shower filters—and if you go to our shower filter page, it's almost like we don't want to sell you one. Like, we're so brutally honest about its limitations just so you're understanding exactly what you're getting. And I think that's really important because the clarity part is what I was missing.

Well, you don't want anybody thinking it's just like grandma's hose and you can just sit under the shower and start drinking that.

Yeah. Or like, I mean, I see people make really crazy claims. "It's going to get rid of all this and this and this." It's a tiny little shower filter. It doesn't matter what company you buy it from. They're only so big and contact time with the water is what matters almost just as much as the strength of the, you know, media inside.

Yeah. And you're blasting it through it. Yeah. Right.

So, and hot water degrades media, too. So, it's just like...

How long do those shower filters last?

I recommend every 3 months like, to stay on top of it. I think every 3 months... it depends. If it's just one person using the shower and you travel a lot, I don't know, maybe six months. But I think that just staying on top of it. And we've had clients send us crazy before-and-afters where I was just like, "Oh, I mean it does work a little bit better than I thought, to be honest," because there's like, rust. There's a picture of her changing out a filter and there were literal like, chunks at the top because there's a mesh that we have. And so rust chunks and just old stuff. So the older the building you're in, right? The older the part of the country that you're in, the more you're going to have to deal with all these things—lead in the water.

So you've got like a whole house filtration system that you guys do.

Yeah.

And then you have the stuff that's under the sink for cooking and eating. So I was thinking about this after we spoke. I was like, "I don't think I'm going in the steam room anymore."

Yeah. Like, you know, just started we just started using the sauna. That's sick. Yeah. You know what I mean? And then I was thinking about like, okay, well, every time... not that I eat a lot of pasta because I really don't, but...

Concentrating it.

Yeah. And then rice.

Mhm.

I eat a lot of white rice.

Arsenic.

Yeah.

You know, the trick is to soak it.

Yeah. So, we definitely clean it out. But I'm just wondering like the water that's coming through. I mean, the rice is absorbing that water. So, whatever is in that water goes into that rice, right?

Correct. So chlorine and chloramine as well, it will boil away. And so that's also a thing to consider. So let's say your kitchen isn't super well-ventilated, even if you have the fan on and whatever. So anything that's boiling and you're standing there, you're inhaling that chlorine vapor, right? So that's not awesome, but I mean it's also a little bit... so how much could it be? I'm not really quite sure. However, you can't boil away heavy metals. You can only concentrate them. So arsenic, fluoride, mercury, lead... the list goes on and on. Those... yeah, it just kind of gets concentrated.

You know, it's so funny because my hygienist is like a big proponent of fluoride in the water. She says like, "Hey, I can just see the kids..." She works in two different areas. And she said, "There's one area that has fluoride in the water and there's one that doesn't have fluoride in the water." And the one that doesn't have fluoride in the water, the kids all have more tooth decay. Which I, you know, I go, "Wow, okay, that's pretty wild."

Well, you got to choose: a little bit more decay or your pineal gland. I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, there's like a big kind of like debate around fluoride, right?

Right. But I think forcing everybody to be, let's say, on fluoride, right, because that's essentially what it becomes is one thing. It's not a choice. And I didn't subscribe to this, you know, I have the choice at the grocery store to buy a fluoride toothpaste or to not buy it, right? But if it's in my water, then it isn't a choice anymore. So, I don't know. I think that messing with the rest of your neurological system for the benefit of your teeth... brush them more often then, I don't know, you know.

Yeah. Do something else.

Yeah.

Figure it out.

That seems pretty straightforward. All right. So what's going on under the sink with The Good For Company like do you have different systems or do you have...

Yeah. So first of all we deal with commercial and residential water filtration and also have a background in plumbing and HVAC. But you know if you go to our site you'll see maybe a couple solutions but we always advise... it's very consultation-based because a couple things happen and this is where we stand out. So, number one, we learn about how you live your life. And sometimes people are like, "Well, why do you need to know that?" And I'm like, "You'd be surprised because I need to be able to advise you in a way that it's going to make sense for the longest amount of time for the best price possible, right? And to minimize your ongoing expenses moving forward."

So, I have clients of all shapes and sizes. And I have some that have a primary home and then like, three vacation homes. And so, the systems that I would recommend and the maintenance schedule that I would recommend for like, a vacation home is going to be different than your typical home. So, first we start by just figuring out: How do you use your water? How do you live in your home? That's number one. Number two, then we go to the water quality itself. And I heavily rely on the EWG. So, if you visit ewg.org/tapwater, they have an entire free database.

I'm just going to guess: Environmental Water Group.

Environmental Working Group. Okay. Yeah. So, nonprofit. They do great work. They come out with the EWG's Dirty Dozen every year. So, it tells you like, the most heavily pesticide-ridden foods and then the safest ones. So, it's a really great resource for sure. And actually, you can access that data through our website as well.

We'll put a link to your website in the show notes so that people can just go there because I think you provide a lot of great information for people.

We do. It's very heavily education-focused and very transparent—like, painfully so. So anyway, get to know you, get to know your water, and then you're matched to a solution. So it's not like I'm trying to force a solution to work for you. It's like I actually have hundreds of different solutions. I just can't put them all on the website because you guys are going to get confused. So it's better to have a conversation. I or my team will be able to filter, no pun intended, the information and guide you towards a solution that makes the most sense.

So, from a whole home perspective, we can deal with anything starting from, you know, obviously something as simple as hard water, which, you know, soft water feels so nice on our skin and our hair, and it's very good for our plumbing. So, if you're a homeowner, it's a good investment. It's a little bit of like an insurance policy against pinhole leaks and it saves your water-using appliances and all that kind of stuff. But hard water isn't like, really the enemy that we should really be concerned with, right? It is the chemical contamination. It's the pesticides and herbicides and pharmaceuticals that are making their way into the water—and especially if you live in heavily industrialized areas like Houston, the entire east side, right? It's just that to New Orleans is just... I mean, it's the cancer belt.

Yeah. It's I-10, right? Interstate 10 to New Orleans. And then they've got a whole... the whole Mississippi River Delta just full of glyphosate. Just like, there's a whole... there's like a whole dead zone there. It's crazy.

It's crazy. But there's a lot of cancer in those areas too, you know. So anything that goes up, is my point, must come down eventually, especially in those rainy areas, right? So it's like all this pollution and then it rains down. So we have a lot that we have to be concerned with and the chlorine and chloramine is one thing, but there's also the byproducts that are associated with both of those things. So you have trihalomethanes, haloacetic acids... like a bunch of stuff that are all, let's say, known to be cancer-causing. Okay.

So they're literally like studies that say that these cause cancer.

Mhm. When people are like, "Well, why don't they deal with it? Like, why is it in our water?" you know, the question always boils down to budget. Like California Supreme Court, there was supposed to be a max on chromium-6, which is the Erin Brockovich chemical, and I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with that. But there was a big chromium-6 issue out in Houston as well. And so, many moons ago in 2018 when we first started, I am very much for the people. Like, if I... I just want to help and if I could give these systems away for free, I really would. Maybe one day there's like a solution for this.

But anyway, I was like, "Okay, well, for families, because it's hard when you come into a home or you have a phone conversation, you explain all the things and then you get this family worried and on board and then they can't get it because of financing issues or something like that." So, I was just like, "What can we work out with the city specifically? Maybe there's a rebate or something." And the guy took my meeting, but he pulled out a calculator. Literally, all he did was pull out a calculator and he was like, "Okay, so how much you want to give them?" And I was like, "Oh, say $500. I don't know." He's like, "Okay, well, I have 218,000 residents here." And so he just... you know, I didn't even need to look at the final number. I don't know what he came up with and I was like, "I hear you. I understand."

So it's a budget thing. So so much of our health and wellness really needs to boil down to like, just us, you know, and oftentimes investing into a water treatment system actually saves you money in other ways—again, coming down to your plumbing in your home and bottled water expenses and all of that. So whole home systems, we deal with the chemical side, we deal with hard water. We can also do targeted treatments like specific PFAS or arsenic filters for the whole home. So, it's really just... we have a conversation. I tell you all of the solutions and options and different maybe package options and we work from there.

And what I love most is it's also something that can be built upon. So, you can start here, cover most of the basics and then, you know, add on targeted treatment. So, that's on the whole home side. And then under the sink is my favorite. It's our hydration stack. So, our hydration stack is comprised of three separate products, but it's like the ultimate stack that honestly we've seen the most success with and get the best feedback from.

It starts with a high-powered reverse osmosis. It has four cartridges there. So, it starts with, you know, pre-filter, then there's the RO, and then two other filters. Now, this model that comes part of our hydration stack has a couple standout features. Number one, the filters themselves are about 33% longer than your average. So, just out the gate, you're getting a lot more mileage out of it, if you will, before needing filter changes. But it also has an independent cartridge that's specifically certified against PFAS, pharmaceuticals, and emerging contaminants. So, it's one of the most... again, I don't want to speak in absolutes because things change every single day, but it was the first system on the market to be certified against those six.

Wow. So like people dumping antibiotics or whatever into the water system and that's showing up.

Or birth control and you're in and you're peeing and then it's making its way into the water but the utility... you know, you have to also understand that, let's say San Diego's budget and Bakersfield's budget is going to be different and so not every utility has the same capabilities of managing filtration. So, I mean, they're already helping us out a lot, right? I'm sure that the starting point of that water is just... I couldn't even imagine. But the utilities can only handle so much. But even if the utility was perfect, that water... they can't control what happens between the utility and your home, that "last mile." How old are those pipes? Are there underground leaks? What's leaching in there? What's happening? What are your pipes in your house made out of? When's the last time you changed your hot water tank? Like, all of these things play a role.

Yeah. One thing I wanted to ask you is like a lot of new homes, the construction's all with PVC.

Mhm.

So, how does that affect things?

I mean, I guess we'll see. To be honest, it's just more plastic, but it's supposed to be harder for it to build up in there versus like a lead or copper or galvanized pipe. But theoretically speaking, there could be microplastics or nanoplastics that are coming through the water through the PVC, but by the time it hits your filter, you're pulling all that stuff out, right?

By the time it hits your purification. Yeah. So, underneath the sink. But I will say this: like when we're using our water at home, we're using it pretty aggressively, I would say, right? Like you're turning it on and it's leaving the hot water tank—or if you have a tankless which is even better—but you're taking a shower, you're washing dishes, the dishwasher's on, laundry... all these things. So I think the more that water has time to sit in an environment, that's when it can more easily be impacted by it. I think that, you know, also the level of purity. So the less... how do I say? So if it was just purified water running through the PVC, it's absolutely going to be leaching it at a significantly higher rate.

Got it.

But when you have a, you know, let's say a filtration and softening system like what you have, you still have sodium in there, which is a soft mineral. That's what creates the soft water. So, theoretically, it shouldn't be leaching as much, but I'm sure something happens. But if you think about it, right, if you have... we were talking under the sink, it goes through all the PVC, let's just say, comes that last mile, right? That last I guess it's the last inch before the hydration stack, but yes, the hydration stack is going to take care of all of it. So it doesn't matter kind of where it went. Doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. You're going to clean it all up.

And then you put it in the glass, right? I mean, you're probably just drinking it right then and there, but or you're putting it into... well, we missed the best part because we purify it.

Yeah, the purification.

But purification is step one. That's again like when people are like, "What's the difference between you guys and Culligan, for example?" Well, because they just clean stuff. But where the optimization part comes in—and I feel like this word is really overused a lot lately, but it's truly—we are optimizing your water.

So, we purify it, take out all the bad, but unfortunately any good is also removed along with it. So then we remineralize with natural Sango coral sourced from Okinawa, Japan. So you've got a Blue Zone, gorgeous coral, ethically sourced. Okay, nobody's killing off, you know, gorgeous live reefs or anything like that. And so that's all that's in the filter. Like, it's you... you can like go like this, you can watch it move around. And the taste of it just doesn't compare to any of these to say the least because it's like this delicate, almost sweet, not metallicy taste. You know, different spring waters will taste different and you have some spring waters that are super metallicy—that doesn't make it bad, okay? But for like, my taste and consistency, we love the Sango. And all of my clients so far are big fans of the Sango.

So that's a remineralizer. And what's nice is that that entire setup, like between the purification and the remineralizing, that for an average family of let's say three to four people, it's about two years of use. And cost-wise, ongoing once you make the investment, it's about $25 to $30 a month. I mean, you're not paying a monthly thing, but if you just break it down, 30 bucks... I guarantee you you're spending more on just your bottled water.

You know what's insane? When I think about all of this stuff that comes into our house, there's probably like $2 or $300 worth of this coming in minimum a month.

Yeah.

We drink a ton of water. And by the way, then when we're going to the gym, I'm taking this bottle and I'm filling it up numerous times in the gym.

I mean, it would take like a case of 12 of these on a daily basis.

Yeah. So bottom line is, yeah, we're drinking a lot. And I think the... you know, depending on the size of your family, I just would never drink tap water. I just intuitively know that that's like, not a good idea.

You hear that, daughter of Jock?

Yeah. Yes. Please listen. I would like to have grandchildren, too.

Yeah. See? We're not pressuring, but we're just saying we like the opportunity.

Yeah. So, you've made this really successful company. What have been the challenges? I want to talk to you and... you know, in this show one of the things we talk about is like the pathway to peak performance for people. It's not the easy road. Most people that wind up on this show are not the people that sat back and said, "Hey, you know what? Today is going to be a TV dinner and I'm just going to check out." Right? They're going the extra mile. So what were the tough moments?

The tough moment was starting. Everybody has an idea. Everybody thinks they can do something better. Maybe not everybody, but a lot of people. A lot of opinions out there, right? So, getting started and being able to hear the word "no" is quite humbling for most people and that's usually where they check out. So, I think that getting started is tough, but COVID could have been a difficult period for us. We survived that in an excellent way. We opened up our e-com side of the shop and did all that kind of stuff.

So, our actually biggest problem didn't come until about 3 years ago when the person that I entrusted to run my San Diego office tried to run away with my entire team.

Wow.

So, I had just had my third. I have three kids. I just had my third. This was in 2021. And I had an emergency C-section. It was an experience. And so, I was recovering from that. And there were just a number of things that were done. And I'm very good energy-wise. Like, I feel it. I know it. You don't even have to speak. I know something is up. You know, we had a number of calls where a number of moves were made and I looked at my husband and I was like, "I think we need to get out to California." We were in Texas. We just bought our house. Like I said, I just had a third kid. Like, I was happy. We had a pool, an outdoor... you know, we had a jacuzzi. We lived literally... it was like our house and then their elementary school was on the other side of the fence. Like, life could not have been sweeter.

But they highly underestimated how crazy I can be, especially when it comes to my business. And both myself and my husband, we are not afraid of change. Like, we are the kind of people like, we can make a change on a dime. And that's really difficult for people to do. Like, for your average person, there's a lot of, "Oh, I need to mull it over. Oh, I need to think." And we're just kind of like, "All right, we'll just figure it out when we get there" type of thing, you know? And it's worked out for us so far.

But it was a lot. It was a lot to come out here. It was a lot to... you know, I had to be very... I had to be sneakier than I enjoy being. We came and we started visiting the office... we would come out, right? People knew us obviously, but we had our office in Houston as well, so we were managing out there and actually it was my cousin who was helping us with, you know, the San Diego office. And so we started popping by more often and all of that. And one day, 6 weeks into this visit, I rented a new office and I notified everybody the Sunday before except for them two. And I was like, if you like the two people that were trying to... yeah, like a mutiny, if you will, you know? At like my lowest point, too.

Like, recovering from a C-section is hard. It's not easy. And it was the hardest pregnancy that I had had. I had gotten my biggest. I felt my worst. I was like... it was just not a great time.

Yeah. Feeling... I mean, I don't know, right? Obviously, but I can imagine you feel like depleted, like you've just been through a really traumatic event. You're feeling pretty depleted and then you're fighting a totally different battle over there.

Yeah. That kind of pops up out of left field and you're like, "Okay, well, not today, Sally." So, we geared up, got our big boy pants on, and we bought an RV. We went out to San Diego. We made it a very fun experience for our kids. We literally camped on the beach. Like, it was actually a lot of fun doing all of this. But once we found the right place, I mean, it was like this: everybody showed up to the new office. So, that was like... but that was, you know, making those calls. I had... like, I have very few times where my palms had been sweaty from how anxious I was. And that was definitely one of those times because I was like, "Oh my god, like, can somebody really do that? Like just pick up and walk away with everything that I've built?" Like, that was... I was just beside myself.

But it turns out that no, it's not so easy to build a brand. It's not so easy to get people on board with your vision. And just because you think that you grew something on my dollar... you having some sort of right to it, right? It's really easy to make mistakes on somebody else's dime. Okay? That's why actually I hear a lot like... I feel a very particular way when I hear people be like, "Just tax the rich," or, "Just do this," and blah blah blah. And I'm like, "You know what? As an entrepreneur, I want to know that all the uncertainty that I have faced, all of the times where I was left with the bag... like, I don't have anybody else to hand it over to." No net.

There is nobody. Yeah. It stops with you, which is a good and bad thing, right? It's very empowering because I don't ever feel like I have a ceiling. Okay. I don't need ceilings to be broken. I'll do that. You know, that was an adjustment. So, we were back in the office every day doing all of that. And I just realized that that was just not how I wanted to run my business. So the entire model of how it was there was we had a street team, you know, it was very traditional like, there was door-to-door, there was online marketing as well, but I was like, "I don't want to do this. I don't want to have to convince. I want to educate people, but I don't want people like... I don't want to deal with people that I have to motivate." You know, I'm not a babysitter.

You want people to come to you wanting this, right?

Yes. Either wanting the opportunity right, or yes, wanting to upgrade their life with water filtration. So, we really changed everything. I mean, we took a huge financial hit to make this change because I made it like within 24 hours. So, I just reached a point where it was like, "Enough is enough. This is not sustainable if I'm constantly relying on the human factor like if somebody has the motivation to go out today or not." Like, how are we ever really going to grow this business? Because I have three kids. I want to be able to be with them in the morning, take them to school. Yeah, I'll come in, we'll do meetings, whatever. But that's just not the busy life that I want. That's not what I'm building.

That's really... you know, I just want to pause there for a second and say how actually cool that really is. I mean, the notion that you could actually structure your life in a way where you could put your priorities for the things that are most important to you, make those your priorities, and then structure your life in a way that will allow you to function with those priorities in order. That's pretty awesome.

It's awesome. But I paid for it. Like, I feel now that I can say I've earned that right because I made a very... you know, walking away from several hundred thousand a month to make this switch is a big difference. And so, but I'm so glad we did and I'm so proud that we did because now, you know, the conversations are different and I'm dealing with people who are... I work with practitioners, with clinics. I hesitate saying ambassadors or affiliates. These are all people who are... you know, maybe they're great influencers online, but they actually have like a whole practice behind them, you know, not just like, "I'm an influencer."

Chinese are telling me I can't be one.

No, you can't because you're talking about health stuff, right? But if you're just a hot chick with like a million followers, like, that's not what we're going for.

I'm not... I'm not going to that. I'm not doing that. And I'm not turning into a hot chick and I'm never going to have a whole bunch of...

Looks matching.

Yeah. No.

You're not going to do looks-maxing.

I'm not doing looks-maxing. I'm not doing any of that stuff. The good news is that I'm solid.

I'm solid. Well, because look, we're having these difficult conversations. Like for example, if somebody's coming into a clinic and they're spending 500 to several thousands of dollars to do a detox—whether they're dealing with mold, heavy metals, I mean, the list goes on and on—any kind of anything, you want to make sure that your home environment is the best possible it can be. You can't be, you know, detoxing and then retoxing in the same breath, right? So, our conversations are so much different now. Now it's like, again, they know they need it. Now it's just let's get this conversation going about how you live, what you value, what's most important, and what's your ideal situation.

And then you know, I'm really, really proud to say that like, I don't speak in absolutes unless it's this: 100% of the time I'm able to walk away, you know, leaving somebody better off than when I found them. And one of my favorite things about water filtration and optimization is like, if you take a new supplement, you got to give it time to see if it works. You have to see how your body's responding and whatever. And water... for the people who are instant gratification sort of folks like myself, it's nice because once it's installed, you are instantly in a better spot. So, you're instantly upgrading everything and depending on how intense your protocols are and where you are in your wellness journey... but like all your protocols, your peptide protocols, if you're on a GLP-1 for example—which, you know, you do you, all good. I'm not a scientist. All I'm saying is this, that one of the biggest side effects is dehydration.

Yeah. Thirst reduction. It's crazy. Um, we talked about that on Cella Systems. So, you know, we have another show that I think you're probably...

I listen to it.

Yeah. And it's amazing. And it's funny because we were just talking about this. We just had a whole thing talking about hydration. I was like thinking, "Oh my gosh, I got to get Jane on this." You know, the reality is that the GLP-1s are making people not as thirsty, so they're not getting that signal. And the dehydration is terrible. It's terrible catabolic for muscle and a whole bunch of other things.

But it's also twofold. So I know we left everybody kind of there's three parts to the hydration stack: purification, remineralizing, and structuring. And we'll get to the structuring part, but when people are on the GLP-1s, not only are maybe the thirst signal is down, but you in your foods... there's foods that are hydrating you, right? You're getting water also from the food. So if you're also limiting, right, you're eating less and the signal... I mean, it's just a recipe for disaster because when people talk about structured water, it just means that it's... it's not chaotic, okay? Like, it's in a hexagonal form. It closely mimics the frequency of natural spring water, which our devices have been tested to show.

So, there's been... it's a little gold device. I honestly... it's very silly. I'm sorry, I should have brought it, but it's this little gold-plated brass thing that has mother water inside. It has specific crystals on the inside to inform that water. And so they did a test of tap water, natural spring water, and then tap water running through the structuring device. And the hertz match the natural spring water. So this hydration stack is as close to bringing a natural spring into your home as you can get because even natural springs these days, they are not safe. Unfortunately, that's just the truth.

And the whole... even just the amount of fresh water in the world is not as much as everybody thinks. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot underground, but I'm just saying that like, places that you can actually go and source from. Also, there's probably more springs, but you got to be able to get up there and do it, right? So, yeah, bringing it into your house and being able to control the controllables. Can't control the pollution that's outside. We can try to contribute to it positively, right? Like reducing it. But we can't control a lot of things, but we can control our home environment where we spend the majority of our time anyway.

So again, you know, picking and choosing like what is the priority. Water is foundational to everything. By the time you've started and stopped your day, you've interacted with water easily over 25 times and I guarantee you like, you'd never even notice it. You wash your hands, you brush your teeth, you take a shower, you wash a fruit or veggie, you cook, you're drinking something, you're washing your hands hopefully frequently enough, right? So, every time you're exposing yourself to anything less than at least okay water, I mean, it just... it impacts so much.

Yeah. So, the structuring piece, like if we go back to like this product, we don't really know if they structured their water after they...

I'm sure they did not.

Yeah. I mean, one would just guess otherwise they'd say it, right?

Oh, it would be like a whole... but also structuring only holds depending on the device. Like ours was tested for about, I think it can hold up to 2 months, but it's at its most structured up to 25 hours.

Okay. So, it's like the... better than the hydrogen that's like fleeting, right? The minute you open the thing, it's a gas, right? So, is this structured water?

I don't believe that it is.

Okay. Really on this table, as far as we know...

None of that is structured. No.

None of that structured.

No. No. Because... so, let's say that it was. All right. But there's the bottling process which will ruin that to an extent. Okay? Because it's forcing like... it's hard. What ruins the natural structure of water, right? Is the 90-degree turns and the chaotic... like, you don't find that in nature. In nature, there's the swirling and it's oxygenating naturally as it's moving through and it's picking up the minerals and doing all of that, right? So, what the device does is there's on one side you can see it's like a Fibonacci swirl and it forces the water through but in a movement that's more closely mimicking the way that it moves through nature.

So, you purify it, you remineralize. I actually saw somebody the other day structuring water from his distiller and I reached out to him and I was like, "I just want you to know that unless you added mineral drops in there, I don't really understand what you're doing."

It's funny, you know... I take... so let's just imagine I take that bottle of water. That one finds its way into our house for some reason a lot. And I put the...

So we're going to fix it.

I got a plastic fork in my head, Jane. Um, so I take these minerals. I like them and they tend to work for me. So, what I'm trying to do is I'm trying to get the electrolytes, minerals, all of that stuff, plus the osmolytes into my water. Now, the only thing that's missing is the water, right?

We can fix that.

I know. We're going to fix it. We're going to fix it. It's going to be great. It's going to be like a whole... it'll be like a revolution.

Whole new world.

I'm going to be your best testimonial, right?

I'm so excited.

I'll call you. We'll do FaceTime once a month and be like, "Jane, I feel like a million times better." So...

Well, you'll notice. Okay, so... I mean, I think we could talk about this here. So, you'll notice in your pee. So when I'm traveling, it's not an exciting topic—I'm not trying to overshare more than I have to—but what I have noticed is that when I don't have my structuring device with me traveling like this trip (I forgot), anyway, there's a difference. So, normally on an everyday basis, regardless of whether I ate really well that day or I didn't eat well that day or had more coffee than normal or didn't, whatever, but I'm always drinking water fairly consistently... it's right where it needs to be: pale, light, like, healthy. But traveling and being away from that water, it gets significantly darker. So, I'll be curious. Just pay attention to that in the first just even couple weeks.

Yeah. Well, that is something I actually pay attention to.

Well, you have to. I mean, it's such a big signal in our body, right? Like, it's an easy way to be like, "Oh, I think I need to hydrate," you know? Or... and something I want to touch on is the electrolyte packets because I get this question a lot too, like, "Well, can't I just use the electrolyte packets?" Now, electrolyte packets have a place, right? Like, if you're doing sports or you're after a sauna, steam room, whatever, some kind of activity. If you're menopausal even and you're sweating all the time, right? You're losing all those electrolytes.

So sometimes you need a bit of that bomb, but the consistency—like where the Sango and where our remineralizer is different—is there's no... first of all, there's no sugar, right? So there's no sugar and flavors and all of that, guys. Okay, water just needs to be water. Can we stop? Because there's this whole side... I was just on a Real Foodies podcast a couple days ago and she was just like, "What is up with this whole side of the TikTok world?" I'm not on TikTok. I can't handle it. I think Instagram is already overwhelming enough for me, but there's this whole side of the internet where people make this... it's like it's their content. They have different colored cups and they have different colored syrups and they have different colored packets. And I'm just like, "This is an abomination." You just need to hydrate your body.

But what you're doing is you're adding, you think, some electrolytes, but if you haven't been doing rigorous activity, you're peeing all of it out. Well, maybe not all of it. Okay, again, let's not talk absolutes, but a lot of it. So, what is the point? You're spending a ton of money on packets. It's just... the story around water is just incomplete. And another way that we stand out is, you know, our team is very well trained on almost everything that's out there.

So, for example, I had a client sent to me from a clinic I work with and the clinician was like, "Oh my gosh, we're dealing with so much... like, such a mineral deficiency and we're having a hard time understanding like, where is this coming from?" Because she's using a Kangen and she was told it was the miracle water. So, the Kangen rep just knows Kangen, okay? And whether you have one or not, there's better ways to invest your money, but if you have one already, it's still not the whole story because you're just electrifying your water essentially, okay? And giving it different pH and whatever. But there's no filtration prior.

Now, when I called her, she actually called me back and she was like, "Oh, my Kangen rep is going to be coming by tomorrow. Let's talk then." So, I was like, "Perfect." So, I'm on the phone with this Kangen rep and I was like, "What are you using as a pre-filter?" And he was like, "It's just a little carbon filter," like we were talking about, like a glorified Brita. And I was like, "Okay." And then I realized that she had said that she has a water softener in her house. And I was like, "Wait." I was like, "She... can you go out into the garage and check?" She had a water softener.

So, what she was essentially doing because the filter... he was like, "Oh, it leaves the calcium magnesium in the water and that's what's healthy." And I was like, "Yeah, absolutely." Except she has a softener and the softener by design takes out calcium and magnesium. So, she's drinking hyper-salty water. Basically, it's sodium that's being infused. That's the soft mineral in water softeners, by the way. So, the dehydration, the mineral deficiency... so, again, she sold this thing that's like $5,000, but it misses the whole conversation. Everything that's actually important, it doesn't do. So, I find it very frustrating. Like the dishonesty and the lack of understanding of different applications and what they're how they're supposed to work or how they can work. So, let's say you really love your Kangen. Totally. That's great. But just... you need to feed that machine the right water first and then you can play with all the pH settings that you want.

Well, the body pH is 7.4, right? And so, there's a big debate about whether or not you want to be putting a higher alkalinity into your body anyway. So...

But they don't even know if it actually makes it in. Like, what is the... it's not about the alkaline, it's not about the pH, it's about the actual minerals in the water. So, coming back to my point is that the natural coral adds a natural balance of not just like these sodium bicarbonate, potassium, magnesium... we're talking about potassium, sodium, magnesium, calcium, zinc, and over 70 other trace minerals that are being added into the water and in the right healthy ratio because we are wet. We come from... we are the ocean. We come from the ocean, right? So those same minerals are so beneficial to us and in that nice calm ratio where you're not being bombed by some sort of packet that's filled with sugar. It's just giving you consistency.

Oh, that's the thing. When those... we have some in the office, right, that people send us stuff. So, we get this and I don't want to name the brand because we're not going to do anything with them. But, the long story short is that they're like... I used one. I'm like, "This is so sweet." What could possibly be in here? And then yeah, sure enough, you know, it's full of sugar, right? And however you want...

Even monk fruit or whatever.

Oh, and by the way, the way that those things are processed... you get down to it, like when you look at the processing of those types of products, those sweeteners, I say it's just like get... train yourself to get away from sweeteners. You know what I mean? It's just not a good idea.

Not everything needs to be a treat.

Well, then also, you know what? Strawberries, real strawberries or real fruit tastes really, really sweet. Tastes really great.

There you have it. It's like training yourself to eat dark chocolate at some point in time. Really like, you know, 85% dark chocolate tastes kind of sweet, right?

And you also don't feel like you need to eat the whole bar. That's the best part. You bet yourself naturally, you're like, "I'm done."

That's if you're Jane Emma. If you're Jock Putney, maybe there's a different story here, you know. Sometimes it gets a little out of control. All right, so hey. We are now... oh boy. We are more than 20 or 30 minutes in. Tell me what... what did you feel on those ketones? Did you feel them?

Yeah, I feel it now.

Yeah.

Probably about five minutes ago.

Yeah. Started to really kind of kick in for you.

Yeah. Very clear. Not... because my concern was in the beginning I was like, "I feel like I'm going to be jittery." Yeah. I don't feel any of that.

Well, and the thing is too, you had a matcha which is low on the caffeine scale, but if you have caffeine... I did this... we were doing a thing like a little series where the no-caffeine workout because I mean admittedly for years training back in the day when we really used to train—now we're lightweight compared to that—but we used to train using all sorts of crazy, you know, caffeine and...

Oh my god, the pre-workouts straight to the 5-hour energy drink. Remember that?

Yeah. You know what? So, I'll tell you what, I have a terrible story with that 5-hour energy when at the height of my travel one time. I was trying to get to Chicago to O'Hare and I was just like, "Okay, I've got like another 30-45 minutes of driving left and I'm just about to fall asleep." I pulled over and I got a 5-hour energy. I thought, "Okay, well, I'll just drink this 5-hour..." and nothing. Didn't do anything. Yeah, that's how how bad exhaustion, you know, can get on travel. So, anyway.

Yeah, the great thing about KetoneAid, I think that I love the most is that it's really pretty predictable. You know, if you're going to put a bunch of caffeine in with this, it's going to amplify it. So you kind of know what you're doing, especially, you know, the way that they measure it by cap.

Admittedly, I kind of know and I drink it right out of the bottle, but then I'm drinking, you know, a certain amount per day and I'm using it in conjunction with the training and the way that I do that. So, it is what it is. Everybody's a little bit different.

No, but you got me hooked.

Yeah, that's great. Well, you know what? I think they're going to be really happy about that. And I think the good news is that this is the highest quality product on the market. There is none higher than this. And I've done all the research to know, which is why we only work with the best. So, why I'm really super excited to have you here and I think it's been such an interesting show. Are there any final things that we need to know? I mean, I think the next time I want to talk to you, I want to talk about air purification because we have an air purifier in the home. I would imagine based on the HVAC side of your business, your husband's business or the business you have together...

No, he handles the HVAC gladly. My corner is the water. Yeah. Because I'm passionate about water, not HVAC systems.

Yeah. Yeah. But the air, you know, the air that we breathe makes a huge difference, right? That in this studio, as large as it is, we will come to a point in time where there's going to be a certain amount of, you know, lack or I guess better way of looking at it is lack of oxygen, increase in carbon dioxide.

Carbon dioxide, yeah. So you can start to... you know, I think it's always... you always notice when you open the door, you feel a little bit better. Final thoughts?

Final thoughts are this: I can't impress upon people enough how categorically different your life will be. Not your whole life obviously, but your home life and your wellness journey and your health journey in general once you upgrade your water. Because again, you can do a bunch of supplements, you could do a bunch of things, but there's a baseline that you have to establish. And I think that the most important... I actually learned this from now she's a dear friend of mine, but I call her my mentor even though I don't think she sees it that way, but I've learned so much from her about actually structured water and all of that kind of stuff. I went to Japan last year to the University of Kobe to... it was the Aquaphotomics conference.

Aquaphotomics.

Aquaphotomics. Now let me tell you, this is definitely something that is over my head. So I was sitting there with like, very prestigious scientists. Okay. But then I also understood that those scientists, the way that they're presenting this information... now I understand why they need marketing and salespeople, right? I was like, "This is earthshattering and you're saying it in the most boring way possible." So, but anyway, really learning about that. Her name is Tracy Duhs, by the way. I'm a big fan of her. So, she is also a hydration queen.

We'll do Tracy Duhs. How do you spell?

D-U-H-S. Anyway, she's a wealth of knowledge as well. But my point is that, you know, she really advocates—and I believe in this too—is again in the free stuff. Go outside. People used to say this to be offensive: "Go touch grass," or, "Touch grass," or whatever. No, literally go do it. Because just by putting your feet on the ground, you're charging your water body. You are structuring the water inside of your body. When your eyes, without sunglasses, without anything, especially in the morning, when your eyes take in that light, right? Because Aquaphotomics is a study of light and water.

Oh my gosh. You know what's so crazy? Something just clicked for me. Christy Featherly on Cella said the other day, "The water in the body acts a lot different than bottled water."

Absolutely. Because it's different. It's called fourth phase. So Gerald Pollack is kind of let's say... I would say the father of this concept and he called it EZ water, which stands for exclusionary zone water. So what happens is he noticed that hydrophilic surfaces, okay, like our cell membranes and proteins, stuff like that, there's this layer of water that repels anything that's positively charged. So in order to have a healthier cell... again, I am not a... I don't have a science background, but this, you know, going to Japan, that was very enlightening to me.

So, you want to increase the size, let's say, of that EZ water around your hydrophilic-loving surfaces. Okay? And that's what's going to create that cellular hydration and health. So, the thicker that that is, the more it's able to kick out toxins and do all of that kind of stuff. Because what he was able to show is that the exclusionary zone is exactly that—like, that structured water just repels anything toxic. So there's ways to improve your water body. Let's say you don't have the money for it. I can understand that. Then start with the basics. Eat water-rich foods. Those are all... that's all structured, naturally structured water. Eat watermelon, cherries, all anything that's highly water-based. Scan the app. Check for your products. But anything that you're scanning is coming in a box. So that's not going to hydrate you.

What about a can though? Oh, that's got BPA probably in a can. Plastic source of crap. Yeah. Right. So you want to... you want to shop on the outside or you know, if you're going to farmers markets, you don't have to worry about that. But there are people that are stuck in food deserts. I mean, let's face it. They it's so limited what they can get. It's almost like the water that you see in that video for Charity Water, that poor girl's. Once again, it brings us back to this notion that we live... we're blessed in a way that most people just who live here...

Take it for granted.

I mean, it's just not even in their consciousness, right?

Well, I'm an immigrant and so I am like, diehard patriot. I love America and it's given me and my family everything.

Where did you immigrate from?

Russia.

No kidding.

Yes. The former Soviet Union. We left when it was the Soviet Union.

So this is like before 9/11.

In '89.

'89.

Wow. Yeah. So yeah, Soviet refugees. My parents left. They had to... this is the thing too, like just the the road that people have to travel to come here is really crazy and I can respect it, but also I do think I'm a big fan of following rules and so are my parents. So they left Russia. They had to denounce their Russian citizenship, so they left it and then it was just out in the open. Yeah. So, they went to Italy and there was a lot of Jewish organizations that were helping refugees at the time and it was... it came down to one interview and it was a decision of whether you were going to be let into the states or not.

And so luckily they were and we were shipped off to San Diego because we did have family that came in the late '70s. So it was kind of like, "Oh, you have people there like you'll be more successful there." And so my family has done really well and I'm so grateful, but like, I feel even with our imperfections and sure you could use a water filter and all of that, but guys, there is... I've traveled a good amount. I have lots of stamps in my passport. I'm very fortunate for that. But I've also been working since I was 12. I think we can search for perfection, but it's not going to be anywhere. But this is about as close as it gets.

You know what's amazing though, Jane, is that you've lived the American dream.

Mhm. And I value the crap out of it.

And you know what's amazing about that is you really worked for it. You know, I mean, I think there are a lot of people who think that like, oh, we're just entitled to have it. And you know, when you're an entrepreneur...

Well, there's a difference between the land of opportunity and the land of results. You all have the same opportunity. Let's say you grew up really wealthy and your parents could afford all the things and you went to private school, whatever, but ultimately I'm just a believer that at a certain point in your young adult life, it just becomes on you. Like it's just a "you" thing. So no matter where you came from, no matter what your circumstances have been, if you want to, you can radically change and improve your life.

But to put the blame... we're living in such a victimhood mentality sort of time right now where everybody is vying to be more offended than the next. And I don't understand this. The Soviet in me does not understand this. What do you cry for? Go. You know, like, just get up and go work or get up and change your circumstance. But this "boo-hoo" is like, it's too much.

You're not a double agent, are you?

I'm not. But people used to make fun of me when I was little.

Oh, did you... you came here with an accent?

I didn't. I grew up in the States. I was one when I came.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

All right.

But I did go back in '96 and we went there for a summer and then I ended up staying the full year. So I actually did get quite the Russian experience of going to school there and then being like the American outsider because the Cold War sentiment was still so very alive. And so, yes, I was constantly... and then when I got back, it was also like, "Oh, where were you? Oh, are you a double agent?" So, I was just, you know, I'm a little bit on the outside.

Well, it's really interesting. Russia has the most purified water in the world. It's called vodka.

Yes. Yes. It's half the reason why the country doesn't have their life together. But yeah.

Yeah.

Hey, Jane, it was great having you in. I really enjoyed it and I look forward to continuing our conversations around water and all the things that we can learn as time goes on. What do I... I just wonder, what do you think's going to happen? I mean, I think... do you think people are waking up to this? Do you think people are like...

Very much. Yeah. I think that I think the whole biohacking and longevity movement, we're just at the beginning. I think our circle, we feel like, "Oh, everybody's in this," like, no, like, not even close. But I do think that, you know, there's trends. People are drinking less. By the same token, I think that they're doing more psychedelics and other things to be honest with you, so I don't think that it's just like the sobriety, but I do think that people are valuing more... a little bit more of their health, right? So you have young women and men that are focused on looks-maxing instead of being at the clubs, for example. So, for whatever it's worth and however they get started, I do think that there's a bigger emphasis on it. And I'm very hopeful because how sick can people be and for how long until you just start getting fed up with feeling this way? So, something's got to change.

For sure. I mean, we're definitely... I mean, I think in our crew, you know, our world, like, people are tuned in. Yeah. And it's interesting to see every single day more and more people are like, "Oh, what... what are those ketones? What is that? What are the things that you're doing?" I have people stop me. I had this lady stop me in the gym the other day and she's like, "Hey, what do you know about peptides?" I'm like... you know, and I get it from everybody, right? So everybody knows. And I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, a little bit." And then she's like, "Yeah, you got the hookup?" And I'm like, "No."

He's like the new drug dealer on the corner.

I don't... I don't... But I mean, like there's this whole underground thing of that going on and we know... I'm like, I said, "Hey, listen. The way that you do that the right way is that you go see a professional."

Yeah.

Right. So you go talk to a professional.

And where it comes from matters.

Yeah. Oh my gosh. It's incredible. It's incredible. Like the certificate of authenticity on a peptide and how many times it's been batch tested, you know, so they get that batch and they test it three different times, third party... I mean, those are really like the top-notch people like guys I really respect, people like Frank Koontz of Progress Pharmacy. I mean, you know, people who are really dedicated to providing, just like you, providing the very highest quality of whatever it is that they're putting out in the world. You, my friend, are one of a kind and it was so great to have you. I didn't know that you were originally from Russia, but that is such a cool story.

I keep it in my back pocket. So...

There you go.

Yeah. Thank you so much.

Thank you.