S2, E9: Shannon O'Grady - Gnarly Nutrition, CEO

You’ve probably seen it too: hydration powders with massive sodium, “greens” packed with mystery blends, and ads that imply you need three different supplements before lunch. We sit down with Shannon O’Grady, CEO of Gnarly Nutrition and a PhD-trained nutrition scientist, to get a straight answer on what actually works in sports nutrition and what’s mostly just expensive storytelling.

We dig into the current electrolyte craze, why most people don’t need daily electrolytes for a normal workout, and how to think about sodium without getting swept up by trends. Shannon breaks down creatine as one of the most researched supplements on the planet, what it’s good for, and where the cognition claims can get overblown. We also talk about the supplement industry problems that frustrate educated consumers: proprietary blends, “fairy dust” dosages, and labels designed to look scientific while staying impossible to verify.

Then we go deeper on trust and safety: GMP compliance, NSF-style third-party auditing, contaminant testing, and banned-substance screening for athletes and regular people who simply don’t want sketchy ingredients in their routine. Along the way, Shannon shares her own path from endurance sports and research to leading a brand, plus why jiu-jitsu has become her favorite teacher of resilience and calm under pressure.

If you care about clean ingredients, transparent labels, and evidence-based supplements you can actually trust, this one will sharpen your filter fast. Subscribe, share this with a friend who’s drowning in supplement ads, and leave a review with the one product claim you want us to fact-check next.

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Transcript

Cold Open On Electrolyte Hype

SPEAKER_00 1:14

The sodium thing right now is getting insane, which is one of the most researched supplements in the world, and the benefits are all there.

SPEAKER_03 1:19

There's no magic pill. All of these brands are acting like people need to take these things every single day. We'll probably never make a sleep supplement either, because none of those things are really solved by something that you can take in a pill or powder form. So they'll include a lot of the cheapest ingredients and less of the most expensive ingredients, including what we call fairy dust amount.

SPEAKER_00 1:40

How did you get into jujitsu?

SPEAKER_03 1:42

Always really enjoyed beating up men. I was very pregnant, so I was like plotting my return to athleticism.

Meet Shannon O’Grady Of Gnarly

Choosing Salt Lake And Van Life

SPEAKER_00 1:48

Wait, you got into jujitsu when you were pregnant? What's the chicken and the egg like fitness culture or the nutraceuticals that are like found here and made here? What is up everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Small Lake City Podcast. I'm your host, Eric Nielsen. Now, this week we are joined by Shannon O'Grady. Now, Shannon O'Grady is the CEO of Gnarly Nutrition. Now, Gnarly Nutrition is the company that makes the supplements that help fuel all of us in our favorite activities that we like to do around the Salt Lake Valley, from biking and running to biking and skiing and all of our outdoor activities. Now, hearing her story of finding herself in the mountains and loving it, getting her PhD in nutritional biology to finding herself creating an amazing supplement brand, helping it grow is an amazing story. She is a passionate person about being outside, uh, loves jujitsu more than most things in life. Uh, so lots of great tidbits here from her. So let's jump into it and hear from Shannon herself. The fist rule is the one that I've had to um because like with me in the podcast, like there's it's a honchpot of people. There's people who it's like, this is the first time I've been on a podcast, I don't know what I'm doing. And then there's people like, yeah, it's my third one this week. Like, let's get started. Like, like, okay, weird flex, but okay. Um but yeah, like when I was um so even then when I was thinking about like starting this podcast, what I wanted to do, I didn't even know if I wanted to be here. Because I was married at the time, she was working remote for a company that was still in Seattle, I was working at a company at Gateway, but like didn't love it. Was kind of like it was one of those situations like, if I can be here for three years, then I can have a good opportunity at the next job, and blah blah blah. And we got to the point where COVID hit, I got laid off from that job, started another job that was fully remote at the time. And so I was like, do we resign at least? Do we buy a house? She's like, what if we buy a van? And I was like, well, tell me more. And so yada yada yada. Next thing we know, we're flying down to Dallas to drive a van home. And then six months, 36 days later, I remember walking down the Washington mall with her, and we're both like, hey, like, kind of excited to go back to Salt Lake. Because I mean, being born and raised here, you see people come or born here, and then they leave, and then they come back. And when I was young and saw that, I was like, what are you doing? Like, you came back, like, come on. And then I was that same person, but it was fun to really go through the effort of like uh turning over every rock and being like, Do I actually want to be here? Do I not want to be here? Is this a cop out? And like ever since then, it's been burning the bridges, burning the ships, and just kind of just leaning into it all. Is it perfect? No, is there weird things about it? Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 4:39

But there is about any place you live. 100%. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 4:43

Like of all the things that could like I was talking to someone yesterday about living in Seattle, and they're like, I bet those uh gray winters got a lot. Like, yeah, everybody loves a cozy day at home with soup in the book, but when it's like eight months and you're like haven't seen the sun outside in forever, it's uh it's a little bit of a different story.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

Yeah, I had to I was uh there during graduate school doing research at the University of Seattle for a couple weeks, and I just remember like um yeah, it it was a paradigm shift. I was like, it's pouring. I usually don't, you know, running here, I'm like, I just won't run today, like I'll go to the gym. But it was just like I just had to be like, I'm gonna get wet, and that's okay, and I'm gonna get my run in because otherwise, if this is my reason for not going, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna get outside and run any days that I'm here. Yeah. Because it was like that.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

And then it becomes my reason to leave the house. You're like, well, maybe not. And the next thing you know, you're like, oh, so this is like what the worst kind of seasonal depression is.

SPEAKER_03 5:42

Yes. Yeah, I get that. Um, my daughter really likes gray dark weather, and I'm like, you may be predestined to live in the Pacific Northwest. We'll see.

Utah’s Supplement Boom And Culture

SPEAKER_00 5:51

I mean, there's good things about it too, because like, I mean, even socially, like in the winters, you know, it's not like, oh, it's after work, what are people doing? What's going on? Like, no one is. They just go home and watch a show, Uber eat something. But then when summer comes around, where there's a few better places to be than Seattle in the summer, 75 degrees, sunny, beautiful, everyone's like, listen, the clock's ticking, there's only so much we can do, we have to take advantage of this. Yeah, and so it's kind of like, yeah, but nowhere's perfect, and it's fun to like even comparing to Seattle, like I never appreciated like Salt Lake and how clean it was. But then I went to Seattle, I was like, oh, there's another human shit, and no one's cleaned this in a while. There's garbage everywhere, and then I come back to Salt Lake, I was like, wow, like this is insane. Like so, yeah, it gives you a little bit of a perspective. For sure, for sure. But I'm excited, Janet, because like gnarly has been some so let me take a step back of like my own personal, for lack of a better term, like douchebag life. Of like I came back from my Mormon mission, went and worked at a call center, but then someone introduced me to his work at a GNC, which was started a whole bro like part of my life that still lives today. And like a parting part of that, I mean you have to learn so much about supplements and learn so much about different brands. And then that turned into, I mean, my own life of gym running and all that, which we'll probably get into some of it in some way, shape, and form. But then it was interesting when I graduated and was working in finance. Um we were doing a pitch for a company that was a nutraceutical company. Okay. And so all of a sudden I do all this research, and I'm like, why are there all of these companies based out of Utah that I had no idea about? And one of which I know that you work for from Park City, the nutraceutical. And then I like started doing all this research and understanding, and then it's like, what's the chicken and the egg? Like this weird kind of fitness culture of Utah or the nutraceuticals that are like found here and made here. And so it's it's fun to see there's like this background of it all that people don't realize that goes on, which is I would assume part of how I mean gnarly got started.

SPEAKER_03 7:44

Well, yeah, and we can get into that, but I want to ask you a question first because I'm curious. Like, so my thought process has always kind of related the abundance of nutraceutical companies in Utah back to the Mormon culture. And this kind of uh and tell me if I'm wrong, because I I am not LDS and I was not born and raised in Utah. I'm from the East Coast, moved here when I was 18. So I have lived here longer than I've lived anywhere else. But um this kind of focus on um self-healing and uh healing with natural products and maybe I don't want to say distrust of modern medicine, but like early on, um it's my understanding that like whether it's essential oils or it's lurking looking at herbal remedies, that that was part of the early culture.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 8:36

And in some kind of more fundamentalist communities, that still is part of the culture. And so that's where some of these MLMs sprouted from. And then where MLMs are manufacturing follows, and where manufacturing is other companies sprout and follow. And then you have things like Duche, which is the governing kind of piece of legislation for um supplement regulation that was authored by Orin Hatch, of course. Um, so that to me that's the connection, um, less kind of the fitness connection. I think that's more secondary, but that's a theory.

Why Gnarly Exists In Sports Nutrition

SPEAKER_00 9:14

It's not I don't disagree. And I think because like there's like the optimistic, optimistic part of me of the culture of that, and then there's like the pessimistic part of the culture of that. Like the optimistic side is people who have, I mean, I mean, the Mormon church down to its beginnings of coming to Utah was all I mean centered in a lot of distrust of the government. They'd just been pushed west, they'd been ostracized. We're not getting all the details of that because there's way too many, and I don't have time nor emotional bandwidth. But um, so I see how that could be distrust. I mean, even the saints had the word of wisdom, which is the the health lifestyle that they're give um that they live by, which I mean, obviously, like no alcohol, no coffee, no tea, no illegal drugs, everybody knows this. But there's also in a lot of those groups of like, oh, if we distrust this, we're gonna do our own, people have these ideas. So that's like the optimistic part of me, which I agree with. But then there's like the pessimistic part of me, which is where a lot of the MLMs come in of like this overt trust to people in power, people who claim things. And so I think, I mean, the truth's somewhere in the middle, but at the end of the day, like they've all kind of sprouted around here and kind of created this like hierarchy of things of people who are just mixing supplements for larger brands, people who actually have their whole brand here and I mean have vertically integrated the entire thing. And so it's that's an interesting thing. I haven't thought about that before.

SPEAKER_03 11:22

Yeah, and I I mean I think some of that MLM structure is based on community, right? Which is I think is definitely something that's strong in Utah and Salt Lake and outlying areas. So I think that's kind of another layer to it if you look at potentially where success started. Obviously, those companies are successful outside of the state of Utah, but anywho, gnarly is not an MLM. Yeah. Um so I wasn't with Gnarly when when we were the brand was originally founded. Um was it founded? I think it's 11 years ago. Okay, that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 11:59

Because I remember the first time I heard about it, I had a friend who was like a uh campus ambassador.

SPEAKER_03 12:04

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

And remember, she like posted on Instagram or something, and she was at Whole Foods giving samples, and I was like, okay. Like, haven't because I was working at GNC, so I like care about these things. Well, care is an interesting word. I paid a lot of attention to them. And so I was like, interesting, haven't heard of this.

SPEAKER_03 12:18

It's a crazy name, too. It's not exactly the name that you would think of, maybe when thinking of a sports nutrition company who, you know, who makes tastable products. Like gnarly is typically, I mean, it's used in in outdoor spaces as well to describe like something that's cool or rat, or you know, it's one of those 80s terms, but also something that's disgusting. So um it's an interesting name. Um, and I I actually don't know the story of how the founders came up with that name, but um, they were interested in kind of bridging a gap that they saw between what was out there in the fitness space as far as sports nutrition, which was uh products that had been formulated to really push aesthetics where ingredient quality wasn't necessarily the focus. So yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:08

You go into a supplement store, you're like, that's a shiny, flashy thing. I think we'll get it.

SPEAKER_03 13:11

Yeah, like blue raspberry with three Z, and you know, it's it's uh got artificial colors and artificial flavors, and um maybe ephedra in it, or who, you know, third-party testing is not a thing. Um, and then they saw companies that were making more naturally formulated products like your grandma's whey that were all kind of oatmeal colored and um taste wasn't a priority, and you kind of just took it because it was good, you know, quote unquote good for you. And so they wanted to bridge that gap and create products that consumers could trust that were formulated with ingredients that um consumers could identify and that tasted good and had a fun lifestyle culture. Simultaneously, I think there was also a connection in many um outdoor sports, athletes that did outdoor sports, between the importance of kind of training and cross-training to not only perform at their sport, but to prevent energy or injury and and ensure longevity and sport. I think Kelly Slater is like a great example of this, right? That the man's the goat. He's been surfing at the highest levels, he's over 50 years old, he's still competing. The amount of care that that man takes in his you know physical being as well as his nutrition and um you know mental strength as well is is off the charts, like from day one. That's been a focus. So he doesn't just surf to become a better surfer, he kind of takes a full spectrum view of um where he shows up as an athlete, and that is part of what, beyond, I'm sure a lot of great genetics, what has given him longevity in that sport. I think to lesser degrees that has also been uh a paradigm shift in all different types of sports, whether it's climbing, ultra running. I mean, now you have ultrarrunners doing strength training, you have climbers spending tons of time in the gym, and also looking at how you know, I I've taken some world-class climbers to jujitsu and they're like amazed at the overlap in kind of movement between those two sports and how one benefits the other. Like I think looking outside of what the sport is and and uh practicing this the specific sport into what can give you a competitive edge and into what's gonna make your body healthier, um that is happens simultaneously with with gnarly looking to fill that gap in sports nutrition. So more outdoor athletes were looking at the gym as something that they needed to be in regularly. And when you look at the gym, the supplement or supplement use in the gym as something that's been longstanding, right? Um, to help promote adaptation to the work that you're doing. And so the interest in supplementation and how it could also help with those sports, I think went hand in hand.

SPEAKER_00 16:12

Yeah, I mean, like the hearing you talk about Kelly Slater reminds me of like the person I paid the most attention to, similar to like LeBron James. And hearing his, he did a for when I had a job at this one place, we had like a free subscription to the call map. And so there's a lot of really good meditations. He had a series, and like he talked through his entire like, here's my pregame routine, here's all of this, here's how I live my life, here's how much time I spend in my hyperbolic chamber. I'm like, oh my goodness. Like for us, it's like this like minuscule differences, but for them it's huge. And it's interesting, like when you're talking about that to remind me of. I mean, he's a gnarly athlete, but like John Collinson, and how much it's gone from like, oh yeah, he's a skier, that's what he was. And then now it's like, are you a skier or are you a crossfit like gym guy because he spends so much time in that and like unfortunately has had a lot of injuries and had to come back and um use the gym as a way to rehab and come back. But it's fun to see how like supplements have been a big part of that, where I mean, for a lot of people, um it's not as necessary because you're not having you're not doing that peak level as much as they are. But at the same time, the word supplement itself is to add to what you're currently doing or add to something that it already is. And so, I mean, if for example, if I'm cutting and I'm have less um calories, then I need a lot more vitamins and nutrition because I'm not getting it from my diet the same way I was. Or I can't have a chicken breast for every meal, so I'm gonna have some protein. And I mean it's that's the way to think about it as like this supplementary thing to help not necessarily be the core of everything that you take in.

SPEAKER_03 17:42

Yeah, I mean, I back that up a little bit. I mean, we always say supplements are supplemental, so I fully agree with that. We we're also a whole food first kind of uh believer that if you can meet all of your nutritional needs for in via Whole Foods, 100% that should be the priority. But the one thing that you said that I disagree with is that supplements are only necessary for for those necessary isn't the right word, but that uh maybe of interest only to people kind of at the top level of their games. I am a mother of two kids, I work a ton, I do jujitsu six days a week, I lift a few days a week, I run a few days a week, I'm busy, I'm running around and I'm my brain's already doing math and all of these. I do a lot. Um and I love to cook and I definitely love to eat. But sometimes my life gets in the way of that, right?

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 18:38

And so for me, when I use supplements, it it varies from supplement to supplement. And I I'll tell you what I take. It's not like there's no there's nothing crazy in there, but sometimes it's a it's it's a product of convenience. Like, oh, I'm I you know don't have a ton of time for breakfast, so I'm gonna grab a piece of toast, put some almond butter and banana on it, and I'm gonna make a protein shake for my daughter and I and make sure she gets some food before she goes to school and I get some protein in with my meal because I I don't have time to like sit down and make a real real meal. Um it could be that like you know, I did totally overworked myself and because I was busy and didn't bring my water bottle, I am know that I'm heading towards dehydration, and so I'll grab like our hydration drink. And I'm a firm believer that not everybody needs electric elect electrolytes every day. I feel like they're being pushed too much these days. But in that case, especially if I've worked out and I haven't had water all day and I know I've under-eaten, you know, I know getting something with with electrolytes in it is gonna make make me feel better. So in cases like that, yes. Vitamin D, most people need to supplement with it, take it every day. Omega 3s, most people need to supplement with it, unless you're eating salmon in your in your diet every week, supplement with those every day. Um, creatine, that's something for me that I think makes a huge difference in terms of the sports I do. And there's more and more research.

SPEAKER_00 20:02

Which is one of the most research supplements in the world, and the benefits are all there.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

Yeah, most people should consider taking it. Um, I think some of the research on cognition gets overblown, but there is a lot of interesting research, I think, that will come out of it right now. Most of that uh brain function research is related to high stress levels, so sleep deprivation or or age. But that's something I take both as a as a woman that's reaching her twilight years, um for which maintaining muscle mass is is critically important. So it's not just performance, it's also health-based. But a lot of those, I'm yeah, I I compete a lot in jujitsu, but I'm a hobbyist. I'm not at the top of my game. But all of those supplements play not just an integral role in my performance as an athlete, but also allow me to kind of maybe de-stress a little bit and make sure I'm getting in what I need to get in on a regular basis as just a busy person.

From Science Fairs To PhD

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah, which I would say you were at the pinnacle of busyness of everything you've gone through. And but all of us have. I mean, I I always like look at people like, oh, you had three whole meals every day this week. Like, that must be nice. Like, I can't do that, but I try to do as good as I can. It's a goal, not something I attain every time. But I want to go back to the beginning. So you said you moved here from the East Coast when you were 18. Um, I mean, talk to me a little bit about uh I mean the path to get to gnarly, because I know I mean PhD in biology is a big part of that, which I'm sure is part of the logical path of that. But but talk to me a little bit about I mean going back to that version of you and um the steps that got you there.

SPEAKER_03 21:39

Yeah, um, I'll take you back to seventh grade. Um I was always uh loved science. Um I started doing science fair in seventh grade. My first science fair project was on whether or not preservatives were necessary in bread. Um I just really and in seventh grade I made the volcano with the baking soda. I just always really, you know, I I did played sports and was in student government and but was super into school and just loved how science kind of took learning outside of books and and you you got to in science fair in particular, you got to decide what you wanted to do. And of course, my teachers were great, and they were they were like, if you do science fairy, then you don't have to do this. And this was always something that was book learning based. So for me, it was like, oh, I actually get to do something, I don't have to sit there and read you know this boring material. And so I think that got me really interested in research at a at a young age because self-directed research is just basically allowing your brain to go where it wants to go. Um and so I knew I wanted to go into science in college. I applied to a range of different schools, um and it came down to a decision between uh going to my dad's alma mater, Notre Dame, or going out to the University of Utah. And I um had come out skiing here in high school and just fell in love with it. I remember like seeing the mountains and being blown away that you could actually like it's gonna sound so stupid, but like drive up to them and touch them. Oh, totally. You know, because they were s the largest mountains I'd ever seen. You know, they're Virginia is mountainous uh in certain areas, but the Blue Ridge Mountains look vastly different.

SPEAKER_01 23:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

And so I was just blown away by it. And I remember having the conversation with my dad, and I I still appreciate his outlook on it because I would have put money on the fact that he was gonna make me go to Notre Dame. And um, he just said, Well, I mean, you could go to Indiana and pretty much roll a bowling ball across the in uh you know entire state, or you could move out to Utah and ski uh, you know, as a lifestyle as opposed to it being a vacation. Yeah. I was like done.

SPEAKER_00 23:48

Well, it's interesting. So my girlfriend is from the like Fargo, North Dakota, Minnesota border, and I've gone and visited her family twice. And like because I I'm born and raised in Utah. And it was nice with the van trip because it gave me a perspective of like changing geographies, being appreciated for it. Like when I came back, I would drive anywhere and just be like head over the steering wheel of just a Amazed of everything. And so going there, I was like, So you mean to tell me the highest elevation here is the bridge that goes over the freeway? Like, yep. And so, like, then it gives me this interesting perspective whenever we go hike or trail run or anything. I'm like, this is great.

SPEAKER_03 24:22

It's all right here. Yeah. I mean, it's amazing. I think it's all it's what you grow up and what you're used to, too. Because our, you know, our kids, we were like, You're you've got to be so thankful to grow up here and have all of this exposure. And they're like, Oh, we have to go skiing again. I don't like whatever. Yeah, grass is always greener. Um, but yeah, so I moved out here and started, you know, in science right away. Um, found a lab that I did undergraduate research in, um, and ended up sticking around for graduate school. Um I in graduate school, I had always been a runner, and in graduate school I found endurance sports. So ran my first marathon in college, and then um I I don't remember exactly what, but I I got interested in the idea of doing a triathlon, and I was a shit swimmer. Like I had to pretty much learn to swim at that point. Um but I don't I I found this great community here. There was an old uh triathlon um club called the Desert Sharks, and I made so many good friends through that. And then through kind of doing my first triathlons, a lot of the guys I met also uh raced road bikes. And so then I started racing road bikes and then started mountain biking and then started trail running.

SPEAKER_00 25:49

You just have like all of the Utah hobbies lined up and pretty much, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 25:54

And then climbing was always something kind of in the background as well. Um, but I just became kind of an endurance junkie and always used to joke that was in graduate school it was an inverse relationship between progress on my thesis and my VO2 max. But um you can't, anyone that's done endurance sports knows that you you can't really do that sport without. I mean, you can do it, but you won't you won't enjoy it without um knowing a thing or two about nutrition.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 26:24

And I was getting my thesis in nutritional physiology in kind of an adjacent field, and it just overlapped really well. I got totally nerded out on uh sports nutrition, started coaching friends, and just really decided that that was kind of a direction that I wanted to consider. Um, I did a couple postdocs kind of more in human physiology and in genetics, and then um took a research assistant professorship at the U and just didn't want to leave Utah. I mean, it comes down to that. Like I think in the tenured track world, you have to love writing. They don't tell you that when you get into science, like writing is such a good idea.

SPEAKER_00 27:04

My girlfriend's also getting her PhD in chemistry, graduating the summer, and we'll sit and she'll just write. Like I like writing sometimes, but not like that.

SPEAKER_03 27:13

Yeah, they don't tell you. No, they don't tell you that. Like grant grant writing, writing papers. Um, and it it just wasn't. I wish I were a better writer, but it was just never my favorite thing. Um, nor did I want to just move anywhere. So I at that point I was like, maybe I'll figure give this sports nutrition thing a chance. And um, I applied to every job that looked interesting to me, got rejected by most of those jobs, and um was hired by Nutraceutical uh in product development, which was less of what it sounds and more like label review and ingredient review, um, but learned a lot there and then moved on to a manufacturer to help them bring into them into GMP compliance and NSF, which is a third-party quality auditor.

SPEAKER_00 28:01

I always see that on the bottles of everything.

SPEAKER_03 28:03

Yeah, which it should be. You're buying the right bottles then. Um yeah. So they they basically make sure manufacturers should be doing what they're doing, and in the supplement space, they make sure supplement companies should be doing what they do are doing. So they test for contaminants, they test for label claims, um, they make sure that you as a consumer are buying something that's safe and that is what it's purporting to be. So I learned a ton there. And neither of those at the time, I was like, oh, I just want to work for a sports nutrition brand. Um but what I learned in those jobs serves me so well and served me so well um in the various roles I played at Gnarly. So uh a friend of mine was a pro skier, and I just remember my husband being like, Noah's sponsored by this sports nutrition brand called Gnarly Nutrition. I'm like, that's a stupid name. Like, let me, I like looked it up and I was like, actually, these supplement these these are formulated pretty well, and I might do this different, but this is cool that they did this. And so I just wrote a letter and uh they weren't hiring any positions, but I just sent them my resume and was like, this is what I think I can do for you.

SPEAKER_01 29:12

Cool.

SPEAKER_03 29:12

And they called me in and um started out just doing contract work for them, and then uh it grew from there.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Amazing.

SPEAKER_03 29:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

I mean, I like that you have I mean, this passion that started when you were younger is being interested in science, which I feel like a lot of people, when it's like that core science of I mean, before a lot of like the technicalities get in and where people kind of get lost in like the math and the complexity of it, like everybody loves science fair stuff and like understanding how the world works better. And like I will always be a huge fan of the scientific scientific method and how to like approach things in a structured way. But then to have I mean, your experience in Utah that you have of like, oh, I'm gonna become an endurance athlete, because again, you can't be an endurance athlete that actually does I don't want to say real endurance, but like actual endurance where you need nutrition or else your body's gonna start to deteriorate and give up on you.

SPEAKER_03 30:03

And you see that in endurance races all the time. I mean, my friend Clark, I we always used to joke, like you had to hit him in the head with a two by four for for him to actually like take his nutrition and hydration seriously. Like that man threw up during more races or was in the med tent during more races than any human I know. Um, sometimes he did super well. But uh yeah, it's you you definitely make a lot of mistakes along the way, and you know what works for you and you you learn what doesn't work for you rather quickly.

How Jujitsu Became Her Obsession

SPEAKER_00 30:34

Totally. And so that's something I because like I if I were to like stack rank my hobbies, running is number two, three, maybe four, two or three. And like I grew up in a running family where the family that runs races on holidays, and it was fun as like I first got into running, I was like, five K's, ten K's, whatever. And then as I start training for like half, so I'm like, oh, like I'm thirsty, I'm sore, I'm tired. And then remember when I was training for my first marathon, I was like, okay, like now really. And I mean, I also did like my road biking stint, and that's when it was really like, hey, I'm out here for like three hours. Like, you can't just like, well, where's my stomach's gonna get me there? Um, or else then you bonk and then you're I I may or may not have called an Uber once upon a time, but that's another story. Um but uh I actually want to take a detour really quick. I want to talk to you jujitsu. How did you get into jujitsu?

SPEAKER_03 31:20

I will always talk about jujitsu for hours. Um okay, so it was that second manufacturing job. My boss had a black belt in another martial art, and I was pregnant at the time, plotting my routine.

SPEAKER_00 31:33

Wait, you got into jujitsu when you were pregnant? No, no, no.

SPEAKER_03 31:35

Okay, I was like, I was pregnant when he was telling me about it, and of to all the pregnant women out there. It's not that I hated being pregnant, but you know, there are there are a lot of things that you can't do. There's still a lot of things you can do, but there are a lot of things that you can't do that you used to be able to do. And I was very pregnant, so I was like plotting my return to athleticism. Um, this is my second kid, so I was I, you know, was wider than I had been on my first kid. And uh he was just telling, I had we had been training at this um, or I knew some folks that had been training at this gym called Jim Jones in Salt Lake that um has kind of a storied past, and he had heard of it. Mark Twite is a is a mountaineer, and he and his wife at the time had started this gym. They're both great athletes, and um his wife had had a background in jiu-jitsu, and I think Chris had known that, and he was he was just telling me, He was like, Do you know what jiu-jitsu is? And I was like, No. Um, he was like, Have you ever been an interested in martial arts? And I was like, I was fully doing crane pose uh after karate kid, but yeah, no, no, always had an interest, never tried it. And um, he's like, Well, it's a great martial art for women because it's the best martial art for self-defense, um, because most fights end up on the ground, and because it's so dependent on angles and leverage, often smaller opponents can best larger opponents. And I was like, hmm, okay. And I started kind of paying attention to it a little bit more. Uh, fast forward, and and um, I had started training at Jim Jones and and had met uh Lisa Bouchard, and she was uh Mark Twight's ex, but she was running Jim Jones at that point, and she met me, and I want to say within like 10 minutes, she was like, Have you ever thought about trying jiu-jitsu?

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Um, I don't know, maybe jujitsu are very uh prosely about it as well.

SPEAKER_03 33:31

Yes, as I am now, and like everybody must do jujitsu. But um so she knew the owners of a gym called Unified that was relatively close to the gnarly office. And we used to do these team building, uh I think they actually bought gnarly products too at that time. We used to do these team building activities like once a quarter, and Eli, the one of the founders and and um CEO that I took over from, was like, ah, let's go try jujitsu. And um yeah, it pretty much was like love at first sight. I don't know exactly what it was about it that first day, but jujitsu is very much like chess. Yes. Like for every move, there's you know, for every action, there's a reaction. As much as it is physical, it's also mental. Um, and I was training for a 50 miler at the time, and I just remember thinking to myself, like, as soon as I do this stupid race, I'm gonna give this a go. And I gave it a go and was in like from the very beginning. Like I did my first comp four months after I started. Like I was, you know, training as much as I could. I mean, this more than anything, asked my husband. I remember like early on, he was like, we don't need any more hobbies. He was like, We I mean, because I had he's a climber first and foremost, but you know, we both biked and both ran and both I can I can just picture your gear closet and all the things in there and he was just like, we just don't have like and I think at that point, like I was doing jujitsu more than anything else, and it was kind of taking away from some of the stuff we used to do together. Fast forward to now he started six years ago and is as as obsessed as I am, and now I'm a black belt and he's a blue belt. So I'm like, you should have started earlier.

SPEAKER_00 35:25

I'm better than you, but uh objectively.

SPEAKER_03 35:27

No, I can still beat him. I that that I he'll be able to beat me at some point, but I'll move that over his head for now. Um but yeah, it's I god, I love that sport so much.

SPEAKER_00 35:39

Because it's it's so I have a friend who he's from Argentina, he's actually on the podcast, his name's Iggy, and he texted me one day, he's like, Hey, are you interested in jujitsu? I was like, Yeah, because I've had friends who've gotten into it, and it's one of those like, oh, I'll see them posts, like, oh, they're starting to do jujitsu. And they're someone like, You're in a tournament. Oh, you have like a just going through like the post-posting quotes and and like learnings, and yeah, it becomes uh like don't get me wrong, like going back to what we were talking about earlier, like Utah is a place of hobbies and like outdoors and people will get into any and/or all of them, and that is, but like jujitsu's not like a core Utah hobby. Yeah, but it was something I'd always seen, I'd seen people get into it. It was like, yeah, absolutely, let's do this. And so I show up and it it was like an open gym, which like at the end of it, like it's it's a sales thing at the end, but like I start doing it. I'm like, oh, this is cool. And I like kind of like watching people, and the thing that sold it for me was there are these two kids, couldn't have been older than like five or six, and they're just grappling and going at it, but like no one's screaming, no one's crying, they're both kind of like focused and like know what they're doing, and I'm like, oh my god, like if you can teach a kid at this level to stay focused in the face of adversity and pain and difficulty and like get out of it, or like even just I mean that counter your way through it to make it your like benefit, like, oh my goodness. And I even told him, I was like, Iggy, thank you so much. I have too many hobbies and I don't have enough time. But if I did, I would love to do this.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Yeah, I think uh you hit the nail on the head. I think for all people, kids in particular, but for all people, um learning to find I wouldn't it's not really comfort and discomfort, but be being able to last your way through uncomfortable situations and find solutions to get out of them. Uh perseverance, resilience. Um it's simultaneously humbling, also very humbling on a regular basis, but also extremely empowering, particularly for women. Um, I started teaching a women's class at the front last year, and I've never been uh the the jujitsu athlete that does women's classes. Um I've always trained co-ed, always really enjoyed beating up men.

SPEAKER_00 37:43

That's the clip.

SPEAKER_03 37:46

Just kidding. Um, but I've I've never had an issue training with men. I mean, I've had some bad experiences, nothing like super bad, but uh but I've also had bad experiences training with women. I mean, it it's it it for me, it's not necessarily male versus female. But what I've learned about teaching women is one, people come to women's classes for different reasons. Um, some very serious, um, traumatic reasons from their past. Some are intimidated by a sport that's predominantly male, which I get. Some have had bad experiences at other gyms because that definitely exists. Um, you know, jujitsu is a hierarchical sport, which I think that kind of power imbalance um laid on top of a sport that is very close contact, laid on top of a sport that is predominantly male. Bad situations can arise. Um and what I've found that I absolutely love is giving these women the introduction to a sport that I, you know, adore, um, that's going to give them a great start. And I encourage them to go to co-ed classes when they're ready. But in the here and now, the fact that I am able to make sure that their experience is a good one and that they're having fun and that they're learning a lot and that they're challenging themselves, that has become one of my most favorite and treasured things.

SPEAKER_00 39:15

Yeah, amazing. Yeah. Yeah. I like even after the class, I like texted Mike, because like I don't have kids, but I have nieces and nephews that are uh anywhere from 17 to 9. And I was like, you guys should have your kids do this. Like, because like my sister I think my middle sister did karate, and I was like very different than karate, like because like one of them responded was like, Oh, like one of them wants to do karate. I'm like, no, no, no, no, no. Don't conflate these two. It's not just all martial arts. I love that you said that.

SPEAKER_03 39:41

So many people would be like, Well, I have my black belt and karate. I'm like, sweet. That took you two years, and you got it when you were 12. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

Like, you want to fight? We'll see how this goes.

SPEAKER_03 39:52

It's a much different. It takes like a very long time to get a black belt in jujitsu, and you can't get one until you're an adult. That's why I'm making the the distinction for those that may not know. But um, yeah, it's a great sport. My kid, I had my kids both in it. Now neither of them do it. Um, they do their own things, but um I think for self-defense it's great, for confidence it's great. Um and then for all the reasons we talked about it, it's it's a good uh it's a good thing to I think mirror all the difficulties that everyone experiences in life, some some more than others. Um because you learn that you know, you can get through hard stuff, you can do hard things.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Yeah, but if you mentally get out of a grapple and win, then there's gonna be some sort of other mental grapple in life that you just have to sit with and work through.

SPEAKER_03 40:42

Yeah. I mean, every day. I I trained today and I um my one of my black belts um was putting unbelievable pressure on my wrist today. And I was like, I'm not gonna tap to this. I'm okay. I can get I can get through this, I can move out of position. I mean, it's it's like micro lessons every single day I show up at the gym.

Transparency And Testing In Supplements

SPEAKER_00 41:03

Cool. Yeah. All right. Anyway, back to Gnarly.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Um thanks for letting me wax poetic ones.

SPEAKER_00 41:08

I mean, but also anything anything anyone's passionate about. Like, I I'm a uh sponge of as soon as I find something like that in someone's life, I'm like, and I can always tell like if it's in a social setting, I'm like, ooh, here comes podcast error.

SPEAKER_02 41:20

Come like, did you see the sparkle of my in my eyes? I was like, oh, you want to talk about it?

SPEAKER_00 41:24

I mean, I saw the sparkle on your Instagram before I even saw it in real life, so that's why I wanted to double in. But uh talk to me about Gnarly because I mean you walk into any sort of uh nutrition store, supplement store, ads on Instagram, Amazon, wherever, you're gonna see a trillion different things. I mean, talk to me about where gnarly is unique and a little bit more like the brand itself and what it hopes to accomplish.

SPEAKER_03 41:47

Yeah, so I kind of talked about uh where we started, um, really being a company that produced products that one were science-backed. Um I think that's something that you don't see very often in the supplement space. There are more and more brands, and and a lot of great brands in Utah that I think are doing that well. Um, but then you, you know, you also see like, I've always said, like, gnarly, we'll never make a longevity supplement. We'll never make a hormone balancer, we'll never make a metabolism booster. And you know what? We'll probably never make a sleep supplement either, because none of those things are really solved by something that you can take in a pill or a powder form or even a chew or any of the other forms, tablet that uh supplement companies sell. Those are things that are solved by lifestyle modification, by good habits, by good nutrition, by good sleep. Um, and they're not easy to solve.

SPEAKER_00 42:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 42:45

You know, uh, there's no magic pill. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:48

Everybody look like that was my favorite thing when I worked at GNC. They're like, hey, I really need to lose 50 pounds. I'm like, well, tell me about your exercise. Like, I don't want to. You're like, okay, well, tell me about this. Don't want to do that either. Yeah. I'm like, there's nothing.

SPEAKER_03 42:59

There's it, there's no easy way out.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 43:01

Um and so when I say science-backed supplements, I also like in the next phrase, I always say, like, we have a pretty vanilla line because there's not a whole lot in the nutrition space that's earth-shattering. Like, um, you know, we we have good protein powders, we have good electrolyte powders with moderate amounts of sodium. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:23

Because there are sodium thing right now is getting insane.

SPEAKER_03 43:26

It's nuts. And you don't need that much sodium. You actually, most people might not need an electrolyte supplement for an hour workout. Like, you get enough sodium in your diet. And sometimes, like I think all of us now go through periods where we can't be on social media anymore. But I get so many supplement ads and the claims about like a morning hydration and afternoon hydration, a hydration product before I go to bed, a hydration product that has a gram of sodium per serving, a hydration product that instead of sodium has a ton of magnesium. Like it's insane. And all of these brands are acting like people need to take these things every single day. So when I say science-backed, I'll say both in terms of the products we make, which are pretty basic, and in terms of the claims that we associate with those products. We also try to make products that maybe one up from other things that are out there. So I don't think everybody needs a greens powder, you know, other other supplement companies. Other supplement companies that that may in interrupt your, you know, the podcast, your favorite podcast that you listen to. Um some of them are green, some of them are red. They're they're, you know, um will tell you differently. But I think if you know, people should eat their vegetables. If you are a person that does not eat your vegetables, then maybe a green supplement would be great. If you're a person that has nutrition, nutrition gaps and you don't want to take a bunch of you know capsules, a green supplement could be great. If you're traveling and your access to fresh food is limited, a green supplement would be great. Those are the places that I would recommend them. But if you look at those big supplement companies, the green and red ones that are on the market right now, they have things called proprietary blends where they're don't get me started about proprietary blends. I'm glad you know what they are because most people don't. Most people are like, oh, this company did their research, and they know that these 50 ingredients in this alkaline super mushroom anti-inflammatory blend is gonna like do all those things for me.

SPEAKER_00 45:36

And I'm so glad they don't tell me how much of anything is in here or what's in here.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

They just give you like a total for the blend. And usually, you know, it's not because there's anything proprietary about that group of ingredients. It's not because they're trying to, you know, keep it secret because they've spent all this money doing research. It's because they are one, trying to include a lot of ingredients in their in their products, and two, including what we call fairy dust amounts. So they'll include a lot of the cheapest ingredients and less of the most expensive ingredients. Plus, because they're in a blend, you can't test the amount of the ingredient in the product. So it's also a kind of sneaky way of getting around label claim testing. So our greens product, we don't have a million ingredients in it. We have ingredients that we feel like would make performance or recovery benefits for athletes based on the research that's out there. And we include them at doses that are going to make a difference. So things like turmeric, things like beetroot. So that you're kind of getting more than one supplement. But does everybody need to take it? No, they don't. But did we think we could make a better greens, you know, powder than what's out there currently? 100%. We we sure did.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

Yeah. No, that's the thing that's been interesting too. And I think that there's been a little bit more of a demand of like transparency into what's into supplements, because it's like when I got into the industry when I was a GNC, um, it was like I would see it and I would ask questions and be like, yeah, it's kind of just bullshit. I was like, oh, thank you for telling me that. And then it got to the point where people are like, hey, like, we all know this isn't it. Like we would demand more, and some people didn't and wanted to provide transparency into it, and somebody didn't. But I do love that like hearing you talk about supplements where you're like, yeah, like our stuff's simple, just for lack of a better word, like maybe elevated compared to what you might find at your Costco shelf or something else. And so, like, I think about it the way I've heard a lot of like my chef and restaurateur friends talk about restaurants. You can either go one of two ways. You can go do something very unique and different, and like try to do some sort of, I mean, fusion concept or whatever that might be and reinvent the wheel, or you can take a classic and you can just make it as good as possible, have the best ingredients in there and knock it out of the park.

SPEAKER_03 47:51

And do the testing to make sure you're getting gaining the trust of the consumer. I think you know, a supplement is a bad word in many circles. Um, it's synonymous with kind of someone trying to sell you something that's not gonna work. Um and there's a lot of supplement contamination. There's, you know, been a lot of cases, particularly in Utah, like with Ephedra, um, where you have ingredients in a product and they shouldn't be. And sometimes they have negative health consequences. So going that extra mile and doing the testing, which isn't cheap and one of the reasons why our supplements cost more than something you would find on a Costco shelf. But making sure that what's in the product, um, what we say is in the product is actually in the product at the amounts that we're telling you. Um, making sure that you're gonna have healthy uh levels of um not healthy levels, but not not non-dangerous levels of things like microbes and things like heavy metals, which um if you pay attention to food contamination is a regular issue. Um, so that's critically important. And then finally, um whether you are a pro athlete and you're tested for all the banned substances on the World Anti-Doping Agency banned substances list, or you're a hobbyist and you just don't want that crap in your supplement, and trust me, that crap is in supplements that are sold on shelves. Um, we also go that extra mile and test all of our uh products for those, you know, 300 plus banned substances. So um that trust is critically important to us, and that has been something that we really try to lead with in the industry.

SPEAKER_00 49:37

Amazing. How dare you do look out for people's benefit and want them to be healthy and live lives.

SPEAKER_03 49:43

I mean, I think there are players that that kind of testing is expensive, and gnarly is not a huge brand. Like that's a big lift for us. It 100% is. Um, and there are other brands in the space that are doing the right thing. Like manufacturers do uh what's called finish good testing when they test for label claims and and can and contaminants like microbes and heavy metals. Um it's not that everyone's a bad player if they don't have that third-party certification. It's just hard for consumers to verify it.

What Shannon Takes And Why

SPEAKER_00 50:12

Yeah. And you kind of alluded to it, but I'm curious, and this is also understanding that you are someone who does a lot of endurance sports, very active. I mean, talk to me about what you take yourself on daily or regular basis.

SPEAKER_03 50:26

Yeah, so um omega-3s and vitamin D are kind of critical everyday supplements that I take. Um, I take protein here and there. Like I said, it really depends on um where I'm running to and how quickly.

SPEAKER_01 50:42

Totally.

SPEAKER_03 50:42

Um, I love eating. So if I can make myself a good meal, I'm gonna do that. But um, I also love our our our both our whey and our vegan protein. So um we use those regularly, and it's a great way um to make sure my kids are getting enough protein. Um, so we're you know, frequently making shakes just just to make sure I can get them what they need, and mom will steal a little bit of that. Um creatine's a big one. Um, that's been helpful. I'm 48 years old. So um, as I said, I'm pretty active both in terms of the gym and jujitsu and running, and um that helps me really realize the adaptations that all that training um is for. There's also good evidence that given the amount of sleep deprivation that I deal with on a regular basis, that maybe it helps my brain function at slightly a higher level than it would otherwise. But uh I think that's that's one that I've been really thankful to see move outside the kind of bro gym world.

SPEAKER_00 51:47

It used to be like a swear word. You talk about creatine be like, oh, you mean steroids.

SPEAKER_03 51:50

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 51:51

And then even my sister, who she is, I mean, loves um touring, loves running, big mountain biker, road biker. Like we were in Hawaii a couple weeks ago on a trip, and she was like, So, Eric, like do you take creatine? I was like, Of course I take creatine. I take five milligrams every morning before my pre-workout before I go to the gym. She's like, Well, what how does it help? I'm like, you have to understand, it's an energy stored in your muscle that gets released at times of high-go, GNC man, I love it. Yeah, I mean it's the m- it's like the energy that's released at times of high exertion. So if you're sprinting or if you're lifting heavy weights for low like reps, that's when it gets used. And she's like, Oh, I didn't know that. I'm like, I know, nobody does.