884 Ayla Barmmer: Founder & CEO of FullWell

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show.

0:44Kara Goldin:Are we thinking about fertility all wrong? Most of the conversations start when someone is trying to get pregnant, but what if the biggest opportunity to improve reproductive health and even the long-term health of future generations starts years earlier. Today's guest is Ayla Barmer, founder and CEO of an incredible company that is tasked, they've tasked themselves with looking just at that, and it's called Fullwell. So all one word. Ayla is a registered dietician who has spent more than 20 years specializing in fertility nutrition, and after years in clinical practice, she saw a huge gap between what the science actually supported and what consumers were being told.

1:31Kara Goldin:So she decided, why not go start a company around this? And Fullwell was born in 2019. I can't wait to get into this conversation about fertility and reproductive health, the science behind nutrition, and what it takes to build trust in one of the most fast-growing and often most confusing categories in wellness. So, Ayla Barmer, welcome to the Kara Golden Show. So excited to meet you and to have you here. So nice to meet you as well. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So for listeners just discovering Full Well, how do you describe the company that you founded and built? Yes, Full Well provides reproductive health solutions for both women and men.

2:19And we started as a solution really for the fertility journey and perinatal stage of life. So from trying to conceive through postpartum, but we now have offerings that really extend with our customers and our audience into perimenopause and beyond. As I have transitioned out of the phase of directly being pregnant postpartum and into the next stage of life. I think that, you know, a lot of our customers have as well and really want that still to have that support and get it from us since they've done well in our products over time.

3:01Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by Zazzle. Okay, I recently went on Zazzle looking for something fun and personal, and I ended up creating custom cocktail napkins. And I have to say, they turned out great. I was able to pick a design, personalize it, and create something that felt totally unique. They're the kind of thing that makes a great gift, but I also love having them at home when people come over, and the whole process was incredibly easy. That's what I love about Zazzle. You can take an idea and make it your own, from custom glassware and invitations to gifts, holiday cards, branded merchandise, business materials, and so much more.

3:43Kara Goldin:And you definitely don't need to be a designer. Zazzle gives you the tools and templates to make it easy. Go to Zazzle.com today and start creating something that is uniquely yours. Right now, save 25 % on your first order at Zazzle.com. That's 25 % savings on your first order at Zazzle.com. Go make something Z-amazing, Zazzle.com. This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business. Not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected.

4:33Kara Goldin:I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice to have, it's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time. That's why AT &T Business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. So you've spent more than 20 years specializing in fertility nutrition.

5:24Kara Goldin:What first drew you into this field? Oh, yes. So I it actually stems way back to this fantastic professor that I had my freshman year of college who who taught life cycle nutrition and I took it to kind of meet a science requirement. I mean, truth be told, back in the fifth grade when they gave us an assignment to report on anything you wanted in our science class, I chose zinc and handed out zinc lozenges to the whole class. So, I mean, I really have always loved nutrition. But, you know, it was then that I remember really feeling like nutrition is so applicable to all aspects of our health. It's very much an empowering choice, you know, in some regards that we can make to really influence our health and health span in a positive way.

6:14And so I've always loved that. When I got into fertility specifically, it was based on a need that I saw in my community. I started being referred women from a local IVF clinic. It's a big one in the area. And by the way, it's notable. I was only referred women, never men, even though, you know, they are half the equation and do play a significant role. And these women were coming to me with the instructions to go see this registered dietitian, me, and, you know, being told that they needed to lose weight and they need to lose it quickly or else they risk their IBF cycles being delayed or even outright canceled.

6:52you know and so a lot of times when I saw these women sitting in front of me they weren't dealing with obesity you know the weight was not really the primary concern and for me intuitively I just felt like we've there's got to be a better way to help in this situation I mean going into pregnancy is a time to add resources it's not a time to start restricting you know and and so and you know, and these women were financially, physically, emotionally just so stressed, you know, and the IVF clinics at the time and to some extent still really weren't offering that diet and lifestyle support within that model.

7:31And so that's when I, again, I realized I can really help, you know, these women and didn't have a playbook for it. It wasn't something I was taught in school. I, you know, didn't really know any other dietitians working in the area. So it was a lot of just working with the individual in front of me, piecing together the research, thinking about how the body works and what it needs in this stage of life. And then over time, I really developed protocols that worked well, that supported people. And I think, you know, these women ultimately felt like this is an aspect of this process that's become not what they probably imagined when they wanted to start a family, but does feel a little bit more in their control and something that they can influence.

8:15And then if you fast forward, you know, down the line, I started requiring if there was a male partner involved that they also came to see me in really every circumstance. And there's some good reason for that. And so that's really how I got into fertility clinical work and ultimately started to mentor, teach, educate other professionals that were interested in it as well. And just has always been a passion of mine because of, I think, how much the science really does support nutrition and lifestyle, you know, making a huge difference, not only in conceiving, you know, getting to that positive pregnancy test, but long-term health of all family members.

8:58Kara Goldin:This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey, everyone, Kara here. let's get real about those early days of building a business. Not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice-to-have, it's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time.

9:42Kara Goldin:That's why AT &T Business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business. Built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. That's so, so cool that you're focusing on this. So as you were doing nutrition, you had this great practice, but all of a sudden you said, I want to branch out and really brand it full well. When did that actually start? Like, when did you say, like, this could be a separate company that I should be really focusing on and maybe not having it so local, but actually building it out and doing what you've done to get it into millions of people's hands?

10:46Yes, I love that you asked that question, because I think it may or may not surprise folks that I'm not your typical, you know, CPG founder. In fact, really, most of my career where I intended to stay was in the clinical world, in private practice, doing my mentorship education, working one-on-one with clients. And that's absolutely what I loved. so deep in the science world. But I was using dietary supplements with my patients in practice. One of the number one things I was using was a prenatal multivitamin. And the problem that I saw was really twofold that drove me to start full well. So number one, there was the formulas themselves.

11:31You know, I often say back then, but even still, I see it today. A lot of the formulas just look like they're made by a man in marketing, you know, who's looking at SEO keywords and trending ingredients or is just following the same old playbook, you know, right for prenatal multivitamins, which, you know, they just hadn't, they hadn't caught up to the evidence for a very long time. So whether it was inadequate dosing, so the actual amounts of nutrients weren't matching what we need in supplement form to our diet, or it was the forms of the nutrients, You know, they weren't well absorbed. They would create digestive distress.

12:09You know, it just it led to a product, you know, that I really felt just wasn't supporting my practice clients the way I wanted it to. And I had to piece together a lot of different things to make it work. And then the second piece was the lack of quality control transparency. You know, there's a lot of information that even as a health practitioner, I just couldn't get about the formulas, you know, and about the products. You know, how were they ensuring that what was on the label was in every serving? Believe it or not, that's not a given. you know or how do I know that what shouldn't be in there isn't in there like harmful contaminants harmful levels of heavy metals harmful levels of BPA and phthalates and you know some of these things that we are particularly concerned with in this stage of life you know and so for me it was really those two things that drove me and this was back actually when I was pregnant with my first in 2016 to start sketching out you know what would I want my formula to look like and I and I think you know, maybe other entrepreneurs can relate, but I've got kind of this naive, I can figure it out and do it myself sort of mentality.

13:19And, you know, it did wind up taking years. You know, I didn't end up launching full well until June 2019. It was summer solstice. I was literally just sitting in a lawn chair in the backyard, very pregnant with my second, my daughter, very pregnant. And, you know, I finally had product that had passed all of my testing requirements. It was it was good to go. And the intention was, I'm going to click live on this website I created. And this, you know, my practice clients are going to be in a good place and have this product to support them while I'm out on leave. And, you know, I thought I've got some colleagues that are interested in this as well.

13:58But really, I underestimated the desire for the formula for a registered dietitian created, you know, products for it being done in the way that I was doing it with the really almost extreme transparency where we share everything, you know. And so while I was out on leave with my daughter, you know, it was it was kind of this moving this moving train. And of course, I'm skipping a lot of steps here in a lot of a lot of a lot of challenges. But it really kind of it really took off from the network of health professionals that I had created, you know, over time. They appreciated this. They were recommending it.

14:38So it was probably about six months in when I was back. I was still fully full time private practice seeing patients all day where I was like, I I've got something here that deserves like I need to give it some attention, you know, but never imagined, you know, it would actually grow to what it is today.

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16:19Kara Goldin:This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey everyone, Cara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business, not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice-to-have, it's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time.

17:03Kara Goldin:That's why AT &T Business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. So when you look at the sea of brands out there, I always see something called or a term used, and there's many terms out there, but one in particular is science-backed. And for me, being in the beverage industry for so many years, it's like, you know, I look at packaging that says it is, we use up to a certain percentage of recycled plastic or something.

18:02Kara Goldin:Like there's all these little tricks, right, that are out there in the industry that I just have a different lens now that I've been in it. So when you look at Science-Backed, what does that mean to you? And I guess not only for your products, but also what you see out there that maybe consumers could be confused by. Yes, gosh, there's so many terms like that. Science-backed, third-party tested, clinical formula, even doctor-recommended. I think all of these things lack the nuance that is really needed to give the context for people to make a decision, you know, because while that sounds really good, there's a whole spectrum beneath there, right, where, you know, it can mean very little or it can be really a solid claim.

18:52And, you know, we've struggled, I will say, as a side note, a little bit to convey the nuance behind what really goes into quality products, you know, because there's a lot of it that I think consumers deserve to know to make really good and educated decisions. And there's a lot of this sort of performative marketing, you know, that's happening like that. But I mean, science fact for me means that, you know, the actual the product itself is based on solid clinical research and a compilation of evidence that is from sources that are credible, are good quality, are, you know, peer reviewed type of research.

19:36You know, so there's research and then there's quality research. Like research itself kind of really runs on a spectrum, too. And so, you know, you've got to make sure that science-backed really has some teeth to it. You know, like what does that mean? I mean, for me, with a prenatal, if I get more specific, it's looking at some of the nutrients that are in there. Okay, has this been clinically studied in this stage of life? If not, do we know based on when it comes to supplements, do we know based on population data what the gaps are between diet and and what is actually needed for for this stage of life?

20:15Right. And so do we know what the gap typically is? That gives you a really good piece of evidence that I would say is science backed. You know, the next piece I'd consider really there would be, do we know if there's an upper tolerable limit, right? Like, is there a safety limit, you know, up here? Is there a minimum amount, you know, where the research has shown there is no benefit until you get to a certain amount, you know? So these are, I think I could point to probably 100 different individual points that kind of come together for me to say, this is the science and evidence that's needed to really support this formula.

20:54Kara Goldin:No, so, so interesting. So let's say, so I, for one, I have four kids, but I know I didn't think about any of this in terms of prepping my body until I actually got pregnant. And luckily, getting pregnant was not that difficult for me, but I definitely started to focus on what I was putting into my body at that point. And one thing that I've said to my kids, I have two girls and two boys, is that, you know, what you do now in your 20s, even if you don't plan on having kids or you don't plan on having kids anytime in the near future, I mean, it all, you're feeding yourselves now everything, right?

21:45Kara Goldin:And that includes food as well as supplements and everything. So what would you say to, like, when do you start? What do you think is so critical for people to do ahead of time so that, you know, hopefully no guarantees, but they don't run into problems conceiving. Yes. Oh, I love that question. And just the first part of what you said, I think, is something that a lot of people do say, and I hear a lot where it's like, well, you know, my mother, my friend, or even myself, right, like, didn't prepare at all and had a healthy pregnancy or multiple healthy pregnancies. There's some, you know, some extent, And so some of what's involved there are genetics.

22:30And there's also when I talk about generational health, like what you do now affects future generations. That's true, too, for, you know, if we if we go back and we look at what our parents, our grandparents, our great grandparents ate in the lifestyle that they lived. Right. And the food supply, the food environment, the pollutants in our environment, the stressors, they all were different. I would say just pointing to one thing, you know, are most people's grandparents, if you ask them, grew up eating organ meats. It's not as prevalent now, you know, for for preference or, you know, dietary choice or whatever it is.

23:07You know, those were like nature's multivitamins in a lot of ways, you know, but there's there's any that's one variable in a whole sea of things. So I think, you know, the point now, right, is to recognize that there are really common gaps in just about everybody's diets, even when they're very well designed. And I think being really strategic about what you're doing, diet, lifestyle, supplement wise, if you think that starting a family and getting pregnant is anywhere on the horizon, even if it isn't, I mean, your health is worth it, right? And so, you know, the things that you do to support fertility are the things that you do to support your overall health.

23:48Fertility just tends to be the first thing that gets downregulated when there's other things going on in the body. So it's almost like a symptom of something else, you know, that we should be paying attention to. So there's never too soon to start. There are nutrients that are needed in really robust supply before pregnancy to hit on the things that are needed in those very early weeks. I think when we think of pregnancy nutrition, we think like, you know, second, third trimester when baby is bigger and needs more energy, more nutrients. But really, in those early weeks, they need quite a bit of folate, choline, B12.

24:26These are things that are really important to help support a healthy neural tube development. And, you know, that can prevent neural tube defects when in good supply. There are things that both women and men can do in the preconception stage, which really it's, you know, three to six months plus, you know, before trying to conceive where you're downloading information from your environment, what you're eating, what your state you're living in, how metabolically healthy you are. And the things that men and women are doing then are sending those signals basically to the developing embryo for their health, as well as to the development of the placenta.

25:06So without going too deep into that, where I'm going with this is what both women and men, again, do preconception is going to influence the health of the pregnancy itself. We can trace some rather serious pregnancy complications like preterm birth, miscarriage, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes back to health preconception. Of course, not everything's in our control. I never want to suggest that, you know, but there are so many levers that you can pull to help reduce your risk that I feel it's empowering for people to know. that if you pay attention to your metabolic health, that is in turn supporting your reproductive health preconception.

25:47And then just lastly, making sure you've got robust, you know, nutrition, because pregnancy requires a lot of things to go right. It requires a ton of resources in order to really have it be healthy.

26:02Kara Goldin:This message is a paid partnership with AT &T Business. Hey everyone, Kara here. Let's get real about those early days of building a business. Not the highlight reel, the actual day-to-day, the friction, trying to manage everything across time zones, across teams, across locations, and realizing how much depends on staying connected. I remember those days at Hint, a retailer call, an order, a decision, all of it. And you realize quickly, connection isn't a nice to have. It's the lifeblood of your business. As a founder, you don't want to think about your connectivity. You just need it to work every time.

26:46Kara Goldin:That's why AT &T Business matters. AT &T Business is the reliable provider for small business owners. And when you have that kind of reliability behind you, you can focus on what actually moves your business forward. Powered by AT &T Business, built to work. Get AT &T Business at business.att.com. Yep. Definitely. So Fullwell, so you launched the company, and how many SKUs did you launch with first, and how has that changed over time? Oh, yeah. Oh, just one. Just one. Fullwell is entirely self-funded and bootstrapped. And it was really important to me to not, it was really to maintain control.

27:35I got into this to produce exactly what I wanted with the quality control that I wanted. And my nightmare and what wouldn't be worth it to me, right, was to outsource any of that, right, to be, you know, beholden to people that wanted to see kind of top line revenue growth at all costs. And so it was really important to me to try to make a really good effort at bootstrapping And so I had just the prenatal multivitamin and I would produce very small lots. We would go out of stock. We would do pre-sales for the next one. We would just keep doing that. And that was a lot of the first year. And it wasn't until, I want to say, a full two years in that we then added a fish oil and a men's multi, kind of the men's counterparts to it.

28:23And it wasn't until another year or two later that we started to really expand the line. And my philosophy is really it all starts with your priorities are a multivitamin and essential fatty acids, a fish oil supplement. You know, that you start there and prioritize. Supplements can get really complicated really fast. There's diminishing returns at some point when you're just adding and adding and adding, right? And, you know, I think that we are losing sight of what's most important and what builds a foundation for health. And it really is, you know, the vitamins, the minerals, the essential fatty acids at your base.