Follow The Brand Podcast with Host Grant McGaugh

From Burnout to Breakthrough: How Rachel Sanders Is Rewiring Wellness with Smart Simplicity

• Grant McGaugh CEO 5 STAR BDM

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When Rachel Sanders couldn't shake her post-pregnancy health struggles despite "doing all the wellness things," she discovered a hidden culprit that affects millions of women: cortisol imbalance. This revelation not only transformed her own well-being but sparked the creation of Routine, a company developing science-backed supplements for sleep, stress, and focus.

The former investment banker brings a refreshingly practical perspective to wellness. Rather than promoting elaborate self-care rituals impossible for busy people to maintain, Sanders offers simple, effective solutions that seamlessly integrate into chaotic schedules. Her approach resonates deeply with her audience—particularly women in their 30s to 50s experiencing unexplained symptoms like brain fog, irritability, stubborn weight gain, and chronic fatigue.

What makes Sanders' story particularly compelling is her transparency about the entrepreneurial journey. She grew her Instagram following to 117,000 in just nine months through consistent posting, strategic platform focus, and authentic vulnerability. Unlike many wellness influencers, she doesn't present a perfect lifestyle but instead shares her ongoing experiments with health optimization while balancing motherhood and business leadership.

The conversation explores how modern life creates the perfect storm for hormone imbalance. From constant digital stimulation to artificial lighting and processed foods, our bodies remain in chronic fight-or-flight mode. Sanders explains how this manifests in numerous symptoms affecting quality of life, productivity, and relationships—symptoms many dismiss as normal aging or parenting stress.

Whether you're struggling with unexplained health issues, building a personal brand, or navigating entrepreneurship while maintaining wellness, this episode delivers actionable insights from someone who's successfully walking that path. Discover how understanding cortisol might be the missing piece in your health puzzle and how small, consistent changes can create remarkable improvements in how you feel and function daily.

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Follow The Brand! We hope you enjoyed learning about the latest marketing trends and strategies in Personal Branding, Business and Career Development, Financial Empowerment, Technology Innovation, and Executive Presence. To keep up with the latest insights and updates from us, be sure to follow us at 5starbdm.com. See you next time on Follow The Brand!

Speaker 1:

Okay, everybody, welcome to the Federal Grant Podcast. This is your host, grant McGaugh, and for the first time ever, I'm going to do a show out of Nashville, tennessee, the grand old Opry right, the home of the Tennessee Titans. I haven't been there in a while, but I have been there. I had a great time when I did. But we're going to talk to an industry darling right now, this Rachel Sanders. She's doing some phenomenal things. She's growing a phenomenal audience on Instagram. That is so impressive that it's got my eyes just rolling in the back of my head like, wow, she is impressive, but what she does? Because she's talking about subject or a subject that is so important today in health and wellness. She's going to let us know what she's doing in that space and how she's making a real difference. Rachel, would you like to introduce yourself?

Speaker 2:

Yes, I'm so excited to be here. I'm Rachel. I'm CEO and founder of a company called Routine. We create smart supplements for your most vibrant health. Our core product right now is functional drink mixes for sleep, stress and focus. But beyond being a CEO and a founder, I'm also a digital thought leader. I am an influencer in the health and wellness space. I've created an audience of 117,000 across Instagram, my newsletter, which is called Glow, and Elevate, as well as other platforms, and I'm also a mom of two. So I do all of this while parenting two little ones, which is a lot of excitement and a lot of chaos all at the same time.

Speaker 1:

That's got to be a lot of fun. That's what it sounds like to me, because you've got to keep that energy level pretty high to keep you motivated. First, talk to us just a little bit about being an entrepreneur and being a mom. That home work balance how do you do that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and trying to live my most healthiest, happiest, most productive life on top of it. I would say it's really hard, but it's also my inspiration for everything I do. So I believe that everybody should be able to have simple tips, tricks that fit into their daily life, that really make a difference in how they feel, how they show up every day, whether they're a working parent or they're a stay-at-home parent. They have all these tools and products at their disposal that can really help them feel their best. And I know what works and where. I share my own journey because I've been there.

Speaker 2:

I'm working, I have a crazy job, I have two little kids, I'm trying all the different tools and products and brands out there. So I really like to bring up everything that's working for me, share my own journey and hopefully some of those tips might work for you. But the other thing is it's all individualized, right, so what works for me might not work for you, but I'm all about trying to help you find those simple, easy ways to incorporate healthier living into your life every single day.

Speaker 1:

Well, I think you have done a phenomenal job doing all of those things and you have grown your personal brand. Now, Follow the Brand is about personal branding. It's about business development. It's about people who are making things happen where other people kind of have these challenges, and I'm sure when you first got started it was a challenge. You had to start with an audience of one that was yourself. So let's talk about your why. Why did you begin this business and what are you hoping to gain out of it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah Well, if we think about routine as a company or products and everything I share online, it all boils down to my own personal health struggles that I was dealing with as a 30-something millennial mom. After my second baby, I was desperately trying to feel and look like myself again and, despite doing all the wellness things from the steps to the workouts to the proper nutrition I was struggling. I was dealing with sleep issues. I was having trouble losing weight. I had excess belly fat that mommy pooch that a lot of people have. I was extra moody and irritable, snapping at my kids and my partner more than I wanted to, and it was frustrating. I felt really annoyed, I was lost and it was really hard. Life was just hard Like. Work was hard, relationships was hard, parenting was hard and, as I do, I dug into the science and what I saw in science and research is that I was not alone.

Speaker 2:

Millions of millennial and Gen X women so women late 20s to early 50s are struggling right now.

Speaker 2:

They're more stressed, they're more overwhelmed, they're more burnt out than ever before, and even CNN has a headline where it's like millennials are facing the first decline in well-being in almost a decade, and this is like a lot of frustrating daily symptoms are coming out of this that I was experiencing the sleep issues, the stress, the brain fog and cognition issues and I really wanted to figure out what was going on.

Speaker 2:

And I tested my cortisol levels, realized cortisol, which is your stress hormone, was really at the base of a lot of my issues, and then started adding in changes across my lifestyle, my nutrition, my supplementation with our products at Routine and realized that I could really make a huge impact, not just through Routine, which is a company we had, but also by sharing my story online. So I built this community of 117,000 in less than nine months. So I started this after I started the company. But it was really in conjunction with this idea of wanting to make an impact, wanting to help people and wanting to let others who I knew were similar to me know that they weren't alone and that there were, like these, simple options to really make a difference in your life. It's not the two hour protocols or the 20 something skincare routine that you're seeing on social. It's a real working mom who went through this herself.

Speaker 1:

You said it right. The authenticity rings true that you had a problem, you had a challenge. You looked down into the market. You didn't see exactly what could help you and your struggle and what you need to do. And look what you did, man. You just you know what. I'm going to go into the lab. Let me go into the lab, create something, use my talents, my creativity, my understanding and then bring something to the market that I know is going to help others. You had a very strong feeling behind this. Now, before you started that journey, were you always an entrepreneur? Were you working and then kind of became an entrepreneur? Tell us a little bit about that journey.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I was in the most traditional industry that you could. When I started my career, I was working in finance. I did investment banking for four years, focused on healthcare and healthcare technology, and through that I'd always been someone who went to holistic health as a solution. Where I grew up, where my mom would take me to a naturopath or think about what supplements I was taking to heal me from my cold, and so it was really ingrained in me from an early age that what I did with my nutrition, my lifestyle, my supplementation, really mattered when it comes to my health.

Speaker 2:

And as I was working in banking and seeing much more traditional health care so I call it sick care, but diabetes management, acute care management, chronic conditions, businesses around that nature there was this new wave of technology and data science that was really making a difference in patient outcomes in this space, and I kind of had this light bulb moment where I was thinking to myself that we should use all of this advancement that's helping so many people once they get sick. Just help people get sick less or make it so that they don't get sick in the first place, and that's really where the jump to entrepreneurship came is. I saw this opportunity. I saw this personal problem and I saw that the opportunity to make an impact. And that's really what routine does, where we bring a much more scientific, data-driven approach to holistic health, starting with supplementation.

Speaker 1:

So routine itself is a supplement. It's something that you take when you're supplementing something in addition to. Are you doing this in addition to proper diet, proper exercise? Talk to us a little bit more about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So our core product line are functional drink mixes for sleep, stress and focus, and so these are kind of like a hydration pack, but functional. So if you're really stressed, you take this and most people are feeling calm or relaxation in 20 minutes. Or you're having trouble sleeping, our products melatonin free to help you fall asleep, stay asleep and wake up rested, and then focus is really for that cognitive boost. So if you're dealing with an afternoon slump which a lot of people who have cortisol imbalance deal with and or just working people in general, it helps your brain work better, you get through your to-do list faster. And all of these are multi-adaptogen powders. So adaptogens are natural herbal supplements that help bring your body back to balance and create these effects naturally quite quickly. And this is all done in conjunction, of course, with a proper sleep routine, a routine around how do you balance your cortisol levels, a routine around cognition and brain health. But these products just can support you and help you get to where you want to go faster.

Speaker 1:

This is so important Getting that energy, getting the right type of energy, getting the balance that you need to meet the challenges of the day. Most people have a daily challenge one way or another and you've got to have ways. And you can't afford to be sick. Who can afford to be sick this day? You're down. Sometimes that means you're not generating income and that can have definitely a detrimental effect on you. So let's talk about finance just a little bit. Because you develop the product. You've got that together. A lot of people have done, you know, developed product and developed something, but they struggle in the marketing arena and they can't really you know what? I can't grow an audience. What were you doing? What did you do? Do you feel was your niche, your speciality, to grow such a huge following in such a short period of time?

Speaker 2:

I think there's a couple of things. So, for people who are starting out maybe they have a couple thousand followers and they're trying to figure this out the three core recommendations that I would do that I may or may not have done well at the beginning, but is one this commitment to consistency, where at the start, I had basically zero audience and I committed to myself that I was going to show up online every single weekday, so five days a week, for six months, and then at six months, I would say all right, is this working or is this not? It's not something where I was going to try it for a week and see if it worked, or even a month, or even two months. That's just not enough time to figure out the content, how it all works, the algorithm like what's going to make sense for you, and then doubling down on that. So that's the first tip is just commit to yourself to be consistent. The second tip is figuring out the processes that allow you to be consistent.

Speaker 2:

So one of the mistakes that I made early on is I, because I was already showing. I was showing up on like X and LinkedIn, but I wasn't on Instagram or TikTok, really, and I was like, all right, I'm going to do four, I'm going to do four channels. This is someone who really like wasn't doing much in terms of video at all, and after a week I was like I can't do that, Like I was spending my entire day trying to figure out what I'm supposed to be posting, posting it, filming it, finding all the audios and doing all the things. And, as I say in marketing, it's the same thing in building personal brand is you have to really focus your resources. Do that like hero product concept first, which, in this case, is your hero platform. What is the platform that matters the most to you and where you can grow your audience first? Because once you grow your audience there, you can always expand into new platforms. But if you can't be consistent to grow your audience in one place, it's going to be really hard to grow it in four.

Speaker 2:

And then the third thing that I did is I really I knew that my niche was going to be in and around health and wellness. At the intersection of my own experiences, my story and kind of this inspirational like hey, you can do this too. But I didn't know exactly what the topics within health and wellness that we're going to hit. And so I spent my first month creating content across different topics and different types of content, like carousels, videos, talking B-roll, just like figure out all the things you see on Instagram. I chose Instagram, I went and tried to create it all. I did green screen, just figure it out right.

Speaker 2:

And then I I quickly figured out what content would take me less time, what was more enjoyable for me to create the content I could create and still run a business at the same time, because I'm not a full-time content creator so I can't spend three hours on one piece of content type of thing. And then I doubled down on that type of content still tested topics. And then by month three I started seeing some traction specifically around mental wellness, around cortisol levels and this overarching concept that I was dealing with. And then I just continue to talk about that and I shared my story. I've been vulnerable about it. I shared tips and tricks, I offer value and do all of those other things and then grew quite quickly after kind of figuring out that topic category.

Speaker 1:

Being vulnerable. I've learned that from a lot of different successful people with when it comes down to social selling, social marketing is that it's not about being perfect. It's about being authentically, to tell your story and sharing some things that you normally wouldn't share, that are pretty personal, but that are important because people are experiencing these things and you're like you know what. No one's really talking about this. You know it's kind of a gap. You know in the in the uh marketing arena that if I fill that gap, I can gain significant market share in a short period of time, because people like talking to people. People don't understand the power of the word of mouth.

Speaker 1:

It's not like she just all of a sudden just threw out a bunch of stuff and then people just started, you know, tuning in. It's all of a sudden, their friends started talking about it, Then their friends and friends started talking about it. All of a sudden their friends started talking about it. Then their friends and friends started talking about it and all of a sudden it's growing organically but it's growing authentically. And then, before you know it, you've got six figures of people. You know tuning in. Now that creates its own problem. All of a sudden, now you've got this great following and there's a demand for your product. You're scaling. How do you, how do you, how do you keep up with that growing demand?

Speaker 2:

yeah, I mean the more. Every time you're successful, there's another challenge that comes, but those are champagne problems, as I like to call it. Um, but we as a business, we're set up for scale uh, we always have been, and so that hasn't been as big of a challenge for us yet. But of course, there's always challenges that come as we continue to scale.

Speaker 2:

From a content perspective, one of the challenges that I personally face is all right, this is working, so how do we double down on it? So for me, that means okay, how are we growing? How am I growing to talk now, because I ignored to talk for forever, but it's definitely a place where I should be showing up. It's a place where maybe it's a new audience, but it's, it's a similar message. So how do I grow to talk from zero to 100k in a quick fashion? And so it becomes all right. I figured this out a little bit, so like, let's continue to double down on that. But what else and that's kind of the plight of anyone that's ambitious, it's building a business, building a personal brand, et cetera is when you get comfortable. It's then that you try to take on that next challenge and then it becomes uncomfortable all over again.

Speaker 1:

So important and I like how you stated hero platform, and that's what a personal brand is all about. You know you have to be the face of the brand. It's got to speak for the business, because people don't really buy into what people say about a product or service, but they do buy into the individual and then if that individual is believable, they can be trusted and they have knowledge and they're sharing, especially in your case, some vulnerable information. I'm not sure what cortisol is or what it does, but it sounds like it's interesting giving the audience a little bit more context about what that is, because they're like you know what I might need that, what that is because they were like you know what I might need that.

Speaker 2:

So cortisol is your. It's most commonly referred to as your stress hormone and it is a major hormone in the body. It affects a lot of different processes and if your cortisol is imbalanced, so it can be both hot, too high and too low. Most people it's too high but that can create everything from brain fog issues to extra moodiness and irritability, more easily overstimulated, extra belly fat trouble, losing weight, adult acne, chronic fatigue, kind of waking up and feeling exhausted despite sleeping, sleep issues, racing thoughts trying to fall asleep or waking up at 2 am and not being able to go back to sleep. It can really impact literally your whole life if it's out of whack to sleep. It can really impact literally your whole life if it's out of whack.

Speaker 2:

And most people, especially as they're entering more of their midlife, have cortisol imbalance because we're constantly being thrown like stressful situations are constantly being thrown at us from work, from the news cycle, from social media, where we know creators are creating content that's more divisive because they know that gets more views and so that creates these like gives you stress.

Speaker 2:

And then even the food we eat to the lights that we're under, being under artificial light is a physical stressor. Eating a lot of sugary, high processed foods creates a physical stressor in the body because there's basically the more blood sugar imbalance you have, the more it impacts your cortisol levels or your stress hormone levels. And so all of these things modern world life things are creating stress and putting our bodies in this chronic fight or flight mode it's supposed to have. Like cortisol is supposed to be there, fight or flight is supposed to be there. From when, like if you run into a tiger or you need to lift up, lift up a car, but just like sitting here every single day. Your body shouldn't be in that state and if it if it is it creates all sorts of problems.

Speaker 1:

So like adrenaline, right, you know it's. It's there. People realize that certain situations you could pick up a card, but, wow, how did that happen? You summon that energy, but, like I said, it's for a short period of time. But if you've got this going on for a longer period of time, I can see that problematic. Now you found your solution. You're marketing that solution. Here's the thing People have. There's this perception around millennials Like they're different from others. Right, you know like. Oh, you're one of those. You know Like. So that's wild when I think about it. Now I'm a little older. I have children that are in the 20 to 30, almost 40 area. I think that's the millennial segment. Why do you think that segment? Now? Do you think because they see in you, they see themselves in you, and is your audience predominantly on TikTok, instagram and that's what's gravitating to you, or is it different?

Speaker 2:

So the audience that I really speak to I would say 80, I think it's 85% of my audience is over 30. And that's from 30s even through to like 65 plus, which is the oldest age group that Instagram gives you. And it's really as life comes at you. As you live more life, your symptoms start. You enter into your late 20s, early 30s and you don't feel like you did in your early 20s anymore. You can't drink the alcohol that you did, you can't sleep for four hours and be as productive as you used to, and so people are searching for solutions.

Speaker 2:

And then, in terms of our customers specifically, and my, the people that I speak to, they're mostly on Instagram. Our customers specifically, and my, the people that I speak to, they're mostly on Instagram. So when I picked the platform that I was going to go on Instagram or TikTok all of our customers are on Instagram, some of them are on TikTok, and so it was easy to choose Instagram first and then grow into TikTok. There's other situations where your entire audience is going to be on TikTok and then only some of them are on Instagram. That's mostly if you're targeting younger, the younger kind of 20s and below generation.

Speaker 1:

This is interesting because it sounds like you have a very good handle on technology, not only from marketing, or we call it MarTech, but also from a health tech perspective. How did you get into the technology realm and seem like you're pretty adept at it?

Speaker 2:

A lot of what we do so routine. We originally were much more of a personalized nutrition, even further, and we've actually developed a lot of technology in and around the category, everything from blood testing to personalized supplementation, which we also have as well. Still, but just through my own personal experience, I've tested, tried, done like all the health tech things, all the new things I see. I'm someone who sees it first, tries it first and just like learns about it.

Speaker 1:

This is interesting. You know, I'm going further now because one of the biggest stumbling blocks that I've seen in my audience have seen is that as they scale, they go into business, they're entrepreneurial, they're doing all these things and then all of a sudden there's this other thing that comes to mind and that's money and understanding finance, and understanding what to invest in and what not to invest in and how to work through those gaps in cash flow and things like that. Has that been an on the job learning for you, or did you come in with a pretty good depth and breadth of financial acumen?

Speaker 2:

Starting my entrepreneurial journey, I was probably more adept from a finance perspective because I worked for four years in investment banking, which means I spent most of my days 12, 15-hour days in and around financial statements, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a lot of on-the-job learning around cash flow management and making those really critical decisions around what are you investing in now versus what are you waiting, and I think that is something that you just can't know until you've been in a leadership position at a startup and or a business where you're bootstrapping and you're cash strapped and you have to make these really critical decisions around resources and you're in a cash constrained situation.

Speaker 1:

These are so important. So we now understand that you understand finance. You have a great understanding of marketing. You have a great product You're solving. Now you've solved a problem that you personally were experiencing with routine.

Speaker 1:

I want you to talk to our audience now. I want you to talk to that person that you just described some of the conditions of cortisol and I like how you framed the story, like at one point in time you could do these things. You could run around the block. You know 15 times. You know on four hours of sleep and drinking, and let's just say and. But now that's changed. You're going through a life change. There is a life change that does happen and you know a lot of people understand, like the growth spurt. You know, when you're a teenager, you're becoming an adult. When you're a teenager and you're becoming an adult. But there's another challenge that happens 20s to your 30s, probably in your 30s to your mid 30s, where it starts to really you know there's some things going on, but I don't think there's a lot of good information around it. But I think you've discovered that. But I want you to talk to that person that's now just starting to say, hey, something's different.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean I always recommend that if something's different, if you're experiencing any one of the symptoms I talked about, trying to understand your cortisol levels is a great place to start. It's one of the major hormones. So if you're a female dealing with like sex hormone issues, like the estrogen and progesterone, or you're a male dealing with similar hormone issues, a lot of those can actually stem to a deeper root, which is in cortisol and or insulin and blood sugar. So, looking at your cortisol levels so what does your stress look like? And looking at your blood sugar, what does your metabolic health look like are the two places that I would start. The cortisol testing is a great way to do that. We do have an at-home cortisol test that you can do, but there's other opportunities for that. If that's not something, that's either accessible whether it's not something you want to do or financially it's not accessible.

Speaker 2:

I would also just like look at the symptoms, because trying to figure out natural stress management techniques is not going to hurt you. So start to learn. All right, what are some of these simple things that I can do to start my day? For example, I drink 40 ounces of water with electrolytes before I have my coffee, because when you wake up your body's the most dehydrated it is. That's a physical stressor, so that's an easy five-minute just add that to my day solution and there's a lot of things across nutrition or how you're working out, et cetera that you can start to implement.

Speaker 2:

And then the other thing is this concept of metabolic health, which basically just means figuring out if your blood sugar is stable, if you're metabolically healthy or if you're trending towards pre-diabetic, which can cause all sorts of other issues. The best way, in my opinion, to understand the blood sugar is a continuous glucose monitor or a CGM. There's a bunch of companies out there where you can just order them and they'll ship them direct to your house. Wear them for a couple of weeks and you can understand how food is affecting your body and if that's kind of an underlying cause of some of these symptoms that you're dealing with. Another thing is sleep. But glucose and cortisol impact sleep, so if those are problematic you could be having trouble sleeping. If you don't have either of those and you're having trouble sleeping, fixing sleep can fix a lot too.

Speaker 1:

Good sleep. That sounds like a winner for me, for certain. Now let's say let's continue on this customer journey, the customer experience Someone who's now tuning into this podcast or listening to you and they're like, okay, I see that there might be something there. What is the next step? You know how do they to acquire the product? Do they get a sample first. Talk to them about what they should do next.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so if you want to get access to our products or try them, you can find us on Amazon Prime two day shipping. There are 10 packs there that are fairly affordable. And then we also do offer sample packs on our site, so you can get a free sample with purchase right now, and our site is R-O-O-T-I-N-E dot C-O and we'll do various specials around samples as well, and, of course, you can purchase them online. And then we're also coming soon to more retailers, as we continue to roll out the retail channel.

Speaker 1:

Now it sounds like there's a variety there. You said 10 packs, so there's packs for different symptoms. Talk to me a little bit more about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so there's a stress, a sleep or a focus, and we have them in two different sizes, so you can get all each of those in either a 10 pack or 24 count 24 pack, depending on the size that you want to purchase how you felt about this experience of being interviewed by me, getting an understanding of what this was about and being on the platform being able to tell your story.

Speaker 1:

Just tell us a little bit about that.

Speaker 2:

I love the interview. I've done a lot of these and this is a great one. It's always great to talk to people who know what they're doing, and it's clear you're a great host and you've done this many times before I love it.

Speaker 1:

I love it. I don't always get to talk to guests like you. I talked to a lot of great guests, but everybody is unique in what they do and how they do it and what motivates them. I'm intrigued by your story because you can either sit in certain situations and blame some external circumstance instead of like you know what, what can I do to solve this problem? And use some critical thinking and use some tools at your disposal to begin to come up with solutions instead of more problems or excuses. That's what I like about your brand. Your brand to me speaks volumes. I think you've spoken volumes during this show. I cannot wait for the audience to really interact with everything we just talked about and get them a chance to try your product. So, before I let you go, tell them again how to get a hold of Routine.

Speaker 2:

I let you go tell them again how to get a hold of Routine. You can check out our website at Routine R-O-O-T-I-N-E dot co. You can find us on social at Routine underscore co. And, of course, you can find us on Amazon. And then, to learn more about me, I'm on Instagram at Rachel S-O-P Sanders, and you can find my website way to sign up for my newsletter and all the things that I'm doing directly through my link in my bio and my Instagram.

Speaker 1:

Wow, and that is wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and I invite your entire audience to check out all the different episodes on Follow Brand. We've got close to 200 of them. This is a knowledge share. This is a library of information for everybody to get better at what they do. There's many, many, many different segments. I would say I put them in the season, so there's executive presence, there's personal branding, there's brand mastery, there's career and business development, there's technology, information and financial empowerment, so you can start to get a better understanding, not just for me, but from the people who have lived it, just like Rachel is living her experience. This has been wonderful. Thank you again for being on the show.

Speaker 2:

Thank you.

Speaker 1:

Welcome.