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I am a huge fan of companies that are dedicated to amazing sourcing and quality products that work. When I find a great product, I love having entrepreneurs on to talk about their backstory and how they started their businesses.
Kevin Gianni is an author, health enthusiast, and co-founder of Annmarie Skin Care. After a fruitless search for skin care products aligned with their standards, Kevin and his wife Annmarie realized a market gap. And in 2009, Annmarie Skin Care was launched.
The Annmarie Skin Care product line uses carefully curated organic and wildcrafted ingredients, which I love. Not only do their products smell fantastic, but my skin feels great too!
Kevin is on the podcast today to share his personal health story and how Annmarie Skin Care came to be. Listen in as we chat about:
- How Kevin and Annmarie met
- Realizing the mismatch between food and personal care products
- How Kevin went from raw vegan to omnivore
- Kevin’s 3 keys to maintaining a healthy weight
- When a healthy lifestyle becomes dogma and identity
- Benefitting from the Pareto Principle
- Annmarie Skin Care’s dedication to quality
Check out Annmarie Skin Care’s Clean Beauty Trial, which includes a free lip balm. All for $19.99 when you use my link.
Rather watch this episode on YouTube? Check it out here: Episode 245: Kevin Gianni.
Resources:
- Sustainable Dish Episode 216: Alec Jaffe (Alec’s Ice Cream)
- Michael Pollan
- David Wolfe (raw vegan)
- John Robbins
- Dr. Joel Fuhrman
- Dr. James Williams
- Pregnenolone
- Sacred Cow
- The Vegetarian Myth by Lierre Keith
- Levels Continuous Glucose Monitor
- The Paleo Solution by Robb Wolf
Connect with Annmarie Skin Care:
Website: Annmarie Skin Care | Kevin Gianni
Instagram: @annmarieskincare
Facebook: Annmarie Skin Care
Episode Credits:
Thank you to all who’ve made this show possible. Our hosts are Diana Rodgers and James Connolly. Our producer is Emily Soape. And, of course, we are grateful for our sponsors, Global Food Justice Alliance members, and listeners.
If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join.
A big thanks to the sponsor of today’s show, Paleovalley, maker of one of my favorite supplements, the Organ Complex. It contains all of the benefits of liver, heart, and kidney – without the taste. You can get 15% off by clicking here: sustainabledish.com/pv15.
Transcript:
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome to the Sustainable Dish Podcast. I’m Diana Rodgers, a real food registered dietitian, author, and sustainability advocate. I co-host this podcast with James Connolly, who was a producer on my film Sacred Cow. I also founded the Global Food Justice Alliance, an initiative advocating for the inclusion of animal-source foods like meat, dairy, and eggs for a more nutritious, sustainable, and equitable worldwide food system. You can check it out and join me at global food justice.org. Thanks again for listening. And now, on to our show.
Diana Rodgers, RD (Paleovalley Ad)
Today’s podcast is sponsored by Paleovalley, maker’s of one of my favorite supplements, the Organ Complex. It contains all of the benefits of liver, heart, and kidney to those of us who don’t really love eating those ancestral foods because of the taste. The nutrients are helpful for brain health, hair, skin and nails and also for energy. Get 15% off with my link, sustainabledish.com/pv15. That’s sustainabledish.com/pv15.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Welcome back to the podcast, everybody. I have Kevin Gianni with me here today from Annmarie Skin Care. I am a huge fan of this line and it was really great to catch up with him not too long ago and hear a little bit of his backstory. And I wanted to invite him in the podcast because I think it’s always interesting. I love having entrepreneurs on the show that are in this space. I’ve had the guys from Alec’s ice cream, which I’m a huge fan of, and several other cool kind of smaller companies that are, you know, really dedicated to amazing sourcing and like totally in line with everything I talk about at Sustainable Dish. So, you know, I think that learning a little bit about your background, and then how you started the company would be of interest to my listeners. So welcome, Kevin.
Kevin Gianni
Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And you’re not too far away. You’re over in Connecticut at the moment.
Kevin Gianni
Newtown, Connecticut.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Awesome.
Kevin Gianni
That’s where we’re at.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So yeah, so why don’t you share a little bit about your personal health journey and then how you became to start this amazing company that I’m so psyched about.
Kevin Gianni
Yeah. So, I was always into fitness. That was kind of like, the thing that I was always into. I’d be… I’d go to the gym. And, you know, people would ask me like, ‘What are you doing? Like, how does that all work out.’ And so I met Annmarie after I ran a marathon and didn’t properly train for it. And she was an athletic trainer. So we met at the office there. And so we became personal trainers. And so that was like our first thing. And then of course, you naturally the way that it goes is like you get into fitness. And then you start to think about health. So we started thinking about our health, and we started to explore different diets. I took a lot of time to start a YouTube channel called Renegade Health. And we were talking about vegan diet, raw food diet. So we were kind of down that kind of extreme diet path, which, you know, I think everyone who’s gotten to where any of us are now – you kind of go against the bumpers to find out like where they are and how to figure out like, we know what works for you and what doesn’t, you might you might get burned a little bit, you might not. So we did that. And we did the Renegade Health show for a long time. And within that what was happening was a lot of our customers, a lot of our viewers were asking Annmarie about, you know, what kind of products do you put on your skin, and we were traveling in an RV at the time, kind of like interviewing health experts. And so we went into the small little bathroom in the RV, open up the cabinet, just to see what was in there. And we started reading all the ingredients. And we said, You know what, like, we’re eating this like pure organic. You know, we can debate raw food and vegan later, but like eating this pure organic diet, and like we cannot recommend this, these products to our people, you know, like these are our followers are looking for us to give expert advice, or at least vetted advice. And we just… we weren’t able to do it. So we went on this path of trying to find something that we could recommend this is back 2009. So this is before, like a lot of the, you know, the landscape has changed since then, which is a really good thing, by the way. And so we started to look around, and you know, we couldn’t find anything that we wanted to recommend. We said, ‘Alright, maybe we can formulate something, you know, with someone else.’ And so we talked to a few formulators, that’s when it got a little bit ugly. At that point. You know, we were having conversations about ingredients that we were against that didn’t, you know, would be in the product, but we didn’t need to put it on the label, which is still true today, which is like super shocking. It’s been how many years since then. And there’s still, you know, ingredients that if under a certain threshold don’t need to be put on the label, which is you know, just off. I think it’s an awful. I think it’s just deceit. And so that was kind of when our activist mindset set in we had we had done some work on labeling GMOs and like, you know, we really were really passionate about making sure that you know, there’s truth and there’s kind of authenticity in the… in any industry, whatever it is food, pharmaceutical diet, like all the things like we need to have it like let’s be honest here. And so we look… what we set out to make our own line and so luckily, we found a fantastic formulator, who is now part of the company. And she helped us get on the right path. She was doing it the way that we wanted to. And then with our kind of augmentation and our bigger picture, we were able to launch Annmarie Skin Care out of that.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, my sister actually has a men’s grooming line that she that she makes, and they do pretty well. But and she was explaining to me that once you start adding water, then there’s like all kinds of chemicals that like stabilize it and stuff. Do you have any of the products that have water in them? And how have you dealt with that?
Kevin Gianni
Absolutely. So water is the thing, like when you look at a product and you see water listed in like one or two, and the one or two slot, you know, it’s going to be preserved in a way that is probably not the best if it’s on the gentler side, it’s sodium benzoate. If it even, I mean, alcohol is not is an okay preservative, but it’s going to dry your skin. So like you’re kind of looking at those are the two that are like, passable, I would say and then it just gets worse from there. You know, there’s just… there’s tons of other things that people can use to preserve it, we use aloe. And what we do with our aloe is that we’ve used different types: Aspen bark extract, rosemary extract, things like that natural type preservatives that allow for a decent shelf life. I’m not going to say that it’s not going to last 10 years, like some of the other products will, but our serums are the ones that will have the aloe, and those are gonna last a year and a half, two years. And if you’re not using that product and a year and a half, two years, I mean, you know, don’t buy it. Save your money, you know what I mean? Like, you know, we can find something that works for you that you use regularly, you know what I mean?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, the serums, I have to say, of all your products are my favorite. I’ve tried everything. And I like all of them. I use the exfoliant, often and I’m so excited, I just got another so I can keep like one in the shower. And then I’ll keep one out of the shower, the aloe herb cleanser is really nice and gentle. And so I use it morning and night. And then but it’s the anti-aging serum and the citrus cell serum are the two serums that I use on a regular basis. They smell so good. I know I was like reading on your website, like all the benefits and everything. But you know, as a user, I like, number one, want to make sure it smells amazing when I put it on my skin. And both of these are very different. Obviously, the citrus one is really citrusy smelling. The anti-aging one has more of like an herbal scent to it. And it just feel… it just smells right and feels right, like it has a lovely texture to it. And my skin has responded amazingly too, you know. I’ve been exclusively using your line now for gosh, when did you guys first send this stuff to me to try maybe four months ago, and I just my skin has never been happier.
Kevin Gianni
That’s awesome. I’m kind of shocked. Like, when, you know, we put a lot of effort into how the products feel and smell. That’s super important. It is like the tactile, you know, like the feel of it. Like if you look, I’m sure you’ve been there, if you go to Whole Foods or you go to your natural health food store, your co-op, you know, they have the testers out there. And the first thing that anyone does with the testers you put on your skin, rub it right, how does it feel? How does it smell? You know, so like, I mean, those are the two things that have to happen. The hope is that they work? Yeah, right. But if it feels good, and smells good, you know, you’re still going to try it. And so I’m still shocked at like, when you know, something else comes into our house, you know, someone sends it to us, we’re… I’m always looking at other stuff and really looking at other stuff like we’re, you know, we’re not like, you know, skincare monogamous or whatever. Like, we’re looking for all these types of things, because, you know, like, some people make really good products. But um, it all… I always go back to our serums – they just do have a different field. And if I try someone else’s serum, it just doesn’t do the same thing on the skin. And you know, that’s a tribute to Bunny and Rachel and like the people who are formulating it and looking at it in that way on a regular basis. But you are right, it does have a different thing. And I’m still surprised because I think that the industry would have caught up by now. I hope, you know, like please do it. It’s awesome.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well, I used to actually I was a marketing manager at Whole Foods Market for five years before that was like my last corporate job before I left to raise my kids and I have to say most of my time when I wasn’t in the cheese department sampling cheeses and hanging out with the cheese guys, I was in the whole body section, sampling products. and like trying them out and there’s definitely some nice ones there. Like, I like the Weleda Skin Food in the tube, that green one like that one smells really good. And it’s a nice thick balm for your hands. But there’s also a lot of just really cute packaging, but not delivering on promise there. Yeah.
Kevin Gianni
Yeah. And that’s like the trend that happened. It happens in food too. It’s just like, you know, you get the hot ingredient, you put a token amount of it in your product…
Diana Rodgers, RD
It’s goji berry infused!
Kevin Gianni
Right? Exactly. And it happens everywhere. And then it cycles through again, you know, I remember, you know, when we were doing some of the health stuff, like, you know, spirulina was popular way back in like the 70s, you know, that sort of stuff. And then boom, like, right back, like, 1995 to like, 2005 it’s hot again, you know, like, and then I haven’t heard about it in a while recently, but I mean, it’ll come back again in like, I don’t know, 2030 or something like that, like spirulina will be the new hot thing again. It’s like, well, no… it’s been, you know… it’s just like diet. It’s the same thing, you know, that, you know, you go from high carb, and then you go like, vegan, and then you go, you know, all meat and then, like, the trends, just kind of like they just cycle over and over.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. Hopefully, people land in what I like to recommend, which is just like a reasonable whole foods diet that is incorporating as many foods that don’t, that aren’t problematic for you as possible.
Kevin Gianni
Exactly. It’s so practical. I mean, just not sexy, as you know, like, just eat this one food or…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Moderation is not… Yeah, well, and I don’t even say like everything in moderation, but being moderate and not extremist is like, guaranteed, you’re not going to make any money. Right? Because you’re not selling like the most extreme thing. You know, I have strong feelings against like, you know, super fasting, any kind of extreme diet and I just think people should eat real food. Not too much, move, get some sunlight. You know, use a good skincare but I mean, like, it doesn’t have to be… It doesn’t have to take over your life.
Kevin Gianni
Exactly.
Kevin Gianni
To food not… Eat real food. Not too much. This is Michael Pollan thing, right? From the…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, but then he gets kind of meat apologetic in there a little bit. And I… you know, I mean, I just…
Kevin Gianni
He was at Berkeley for a while, you know, ya know, I can say that. We were there for 10 years. So…
Diana Rodgers, RD
Berkeley is really intense. Yeah. So well, so talk about your vegan journey and how you came to becoming omnivores.
Kevin Gianni
Yeah, for sure. We’d heard about the raw food diet from I think it was David Wolfe. Right. So we were listening to David Wolfe podcasts, were eating raw chocolate making chocolate, avocado, goji berry, maca, smoothies and that sort of stuff. And you know, for someone who was exercising a lot, and you’re not paying a lot of attention to my diet, you know, I saw results immediately. Right. So I mean, like, you know, I never had, like, been, like, really nice and cut. And, you know, just removing some of those things that I was eating on a regular basis corn chips, and, you know, whatever else comes with that, immediately saw results. So like, ultimately, what the mind does is it like says, okay, obviously, this is the right path to go, maybe for the rest of my life. So, at that time, we’re still eating some meat, but then, you know, kind of went into the John Robbins, you know, Diet for New America thing. You read his book, got into that for a bit as well, I wouldn’t say that we were so much on the animal rights side of the veganism, but on just the healthy diet, Joe Fuhrman, you know, all these people that I’m sure, you know, people have heard about, and you’ve heard about it as well. And, you know, just like any diet that removes processed foods, it worked for, you know, a period of time. And so that was, you know, we’re traveling around the RV, we’re speaking, teaching people about this. We’re doing our videos, interviewing all these people. And I started to get extremely irritable, like, real, like, noticeably irritable, like very short fuse, low sex drive, like cystic bacne on my back. And, you know, I needed to figure out what was going on because, like, I was, couldn’t get to bed. It was just, it was bad. You know, I literally like you know, you Google all those symptoms and you know, WebMD comes up and says that you have everything from like cancer to AIDs to, you know, whatever, and you’re just like, you know, just so lost, right? And we had access to some of these health experts, but you know, these are all people who are kind of were along that line of vegan or raw food. So you know, the classic, like, raw food thing is like, if you’re having symptoms of something, it’s because you’re still detoxing, and it’s like, Look, I’m not detoxing, you know, five, six years into this. Like, I don’t think that’s… I don’t think that’s physically possible. So we had a friend that we were introduced to down in Sarasota, Florida, Dr. James Williams. And we went down to Sarasota we stayed at Siesta Key down there. And we went up to his office, and he did a whole run of blood tests on me, and got them back. And he just, we sit down in his office, and he looks at me, and he says, you know, your pregnenolone, which is like a grandparent hormone, is pretty much at the level of an 85 year old man. And I’m like, Alright, so like, let’s fix that. He was, like, what does that mean? He’s like, Well, that means that you probably need to change your diet. You know, that’s probably the best way to go about this. And I’m just like, What do you mean? Like, well, I mean, I’m still gonna be vegan, right? And he’s like, I don’t know about that. And I’m like, Oh, my gosh, and then, you know, at that time, like, the animal thing had kind of come into grips a little bit. So, you know, there was a lot of weird feelings around that, and what was I going to do? And, so he finally convinced me to try yogurt, right? And so like, I was like, okay, I can do. I think I can do some yogurt, that seems to be possible solution for me. Now, keep in mind, like we were doing health videos on YouTube. And we were raw vegan, and you know, we’d be recognized at Whole Foods co-ops and all that sort of stuff. So now I had to go into the store, and figure out a way to get yogurt, and not be recognized. So it’s kind of a very difficult situation. So because the first thing if you saw someone who recognize you, they would like look at you, and then they would look into your cart. It’s like this weird like food… So, I literally would go and I would, I would get a bunch of kale, and I would put it in my little basket. And then I would take the yogurt and I’ll put like underneath and cover that I would just hope that if someone at the checkout didn’t recognize us. So it was kind of a, it’s kind of a tough thing. But what happened was I… when I had the permission to eat yogurt, I had some, you know, got the 32 ounce containers of like organic goat yogurt, whatever it is. And it was the only thing that I wanted to eat. I would eat two to three of them a day. Because my body was just like, it was just craving whatever was in there, that imprint from the past of like, whatever nutrients happened to have been in there, it was just like, we need this and do not stop. And you know, nothing else, literally barely anything else. And you know, after even three, four weeks, it became pretty evident that, you know, this was definitely working for me. I was… I had so much more energy. I was running at the time, I was able to have that like second, third and fourth gear that I couldn’t find. And so it was just, you know, it was a huge revelation and overtime I would go back to Dr. Williams, and he would test my blood and everything just came back to normal.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So you started with yogurt. That’s the first time someone’s told me that they started with yogurt. I’ve heard… we just had yoga girl the other day. And for her it was an egg. I know with Lierre Keith, it was canned salmon, I think. You know, for other people, they go out and they just like, go get a burger. Like, they just like break down and you know, need that or, or bacon but I’ve never heard yogurt before.
Kevin Gianni
Yeah, yeah, Lierre was inspiring. Back in the day, I don’t remember how the timelines crossed. But I don’t know if I was experiencing the same thing that she was experiencing. You know, like, when she was kind of going through her process.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, for anyone listening who hasn’t seen my film and or is not familiar with Lierre Keith and is curious. Her book, The Vegetarian Myth is absolutely wonderful. And it’s just talks about her experience. So it’s almost like the book Sacred Cow, but in a memoir, kind of. Yeah. So you went from yogurt to how long were you just on yogurt before you started pulling other foods in?
Kevin Gianni
It wasn’t too long after, you know, like, I think that the thing for me, I’m pretty pragmatic when it comes to like, you know, if it works, continue, and I just saw the evidence, like, I think that that was like the way for me to be able to justify it mentally, scientifically, whatever, practically, was that this is putting you back into health. So clearly, it’s what you’re supposed to have. And you know, I think when other people in that period of time, and even now, like they say, Hey, I want to do this diet, I’m like, cool, just get your blood tested, you know, and probably now this next level is get all your genetics like looked at too so we kind of know that was like that. It’s the next level after the blood markers and just get a marker see what see what’s going on. See what could possibly happen with you. And then just monitor it, you know, you can try whatever diet you want, right I mean, like it’s kind of fun until… like to try the things and see how your body reacts and know where you’re going and whatnot and you know popping a blood sugar monitor on you and seeing where you go and when you do certain things. So like be the scientists, you know the scientist yourself don’t listen to anyone else, like you know, tell you what you need to do, run it through the filter of what your biometrics look like, what your gauges, how they’re going and, you know, if you’re revving up too high, you know, cut back on something. Unfortunately, it might be the thing that you like, really love, you know. I tell like what my mother-in-law and my mom, like, you know, I’m like, if you want to maintain like the healthy weight, particularly as you’re getting older, you know, the three things that I see that are going to put on weight is alcohol, is bread. Right? So here we go. We have alcohol, we have bread, and we have sugar, right? So those are the those are the three – wheat, I guess you could probably going back carbohydrates if you want to do it that way. I mean, remove two and you’ll maintain your weight. But if you keep two or three, it’s not going to work. But no one wants to remove all of them.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well, you know, the funny thing is, when I talk to women about their wine consumption, first of all, they won’t list it on their food journal because they’re like… there’s this sort of dissonence that they’re not… they don’t see wine as as calories, or they’re hiding it. Because whatever someone tells you they drink, it’s actually double, like in real life of what they admit that they drink. But it has this awful double whammy of you know, not only extra calories that you don’t need that can go straight into fat storage, but also decimating your sleep so that the next day, you’re actually craving bad for you foods more often because you’re tired. And you’re like kind of dehydrated and hungover a little bit and your blood sugar’s a little wacky from it being whacked from the alcohol. So it’s, you know, those glucose monitors, we just did a glucose challenge with Levels.
Kevin Gianni
Oh, yeah. Oh, cool.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yes, last month, and I hope that people start understanding how to better biohack themselves. And that, you know, pretty soon, like, even you could just go order a B12 on yourself without having to… labs I mean, be, you know, or your ferritin and like, why can I just go to CVS and say, like, hey, I want to get my ferritin checked.
Kevin Gianni
I mean, it’s wild, that we can’t do it. It’s like, heaven forbid that we maybe be able to have a little bit of control over what our body’s doing, and how to monitor it. It’s wild.
Diana Rodgers, RD
I know. So I’m so glad that you’ve recovered your health. What did your partner say? I mean, she was down this vegan journey with you. How did she react when you started eating the yogurt and pulling animal foods in?
Kevin Gianni
Oh, I remember we were sitting at a follow-up in James’s office, and he looked at her and he was just like, how do you feel? And she’s like, I feel like I have my husband back again. So I mean, it was that noticeable? It was Yeah. So…
Diana Rodgers, RD
So did she… was she also vegan, though? And did she… so she wasn’t putting up any kind of resistance at all to you eating?
Kevin Gianni
No, no, she…. She was doing… because she just tends to like a lot of vegetables. And so that… not having the meat at that point. And she was just like, that’s fine. You know, like, I’ll try it. But um, but even today, I mean, she’ll definitely eat meat, but it’s not like she’s just not like some people. Some people are just kind of wired that way, you know, like, I’ll eat it meat. Just the whole plate of it. And I’d be fine, you know, just with that. And she’s like, the opposite. She had a whole bunch of vegetables and then you know, what, a piece of meat? Yeah, I can’t say that, like, eating all the meat that I eat is 100% healthy either.
Diana Rodgers, RD
No, I think everyone’s constitution is a little bit different. I, you know, as someone who went for 26 years as an undiagnosed celiac, I definitely had some you know, irreversible damage done to my guts and vegetables just don’t work that great for me. So I do eat some, but I tend to you know, they’re almost the condiments to my meal. So it’s like very… my meals need to be more meat centric, and then I’ll have like some mushrooms and onions or some arugula or you know, some herbs or something like that. But I tend to be quite meat centric, but that does not mean I advocate for complete carnivorism for all people. Although I have in one case, one nutrition client of mine who was an obsessive overeater, compulsive overeater. It was so distracting to her to have to navigate all the choices and so many foods were triggering her to overconsume that limiting her choices for a period of time for three months to just meat while she kind of recalibrated her satiety signaling and her brain’s reaction to eating. It worked miracles for her. So, you know, and she didn’t go deficient. She lost 60 pounds in three months. And I mean, it was amazing. But I definitely don’t… I follow on Facebook, a lot of the carnivore groups where people will post Oh, it’s, you know, things aren’t really working for me and everyone’s pouncing on – but go harder, you know, eat more meat, you know, whatever. And I’m like, you don’t really have to do it. Just because something’s not working for you doesn’t mean that you have to go harder. And I know, with veganism, too, it tends to be you know, if people aren’t… if people are struggling with their health, and it’s, well, you have to go raw, or you have to go fruit only or, you know, just breathe air and you’ll be fine. You know. So, you know, just being a little bit more reasonable about things is definitely my approach.
Kevin Gianni
It’s weird when it comes… when it goes from that, like, healthy diet, healthy diet, healthy diet dogma, you know, it slips into dogma pretty… it kind of nebulously, but it does. And then that’s when it’s like what I was saying, with raw food and detox, you still need to detox more. It’s like, No, I don’t think so. Like, you need to eat meat more. It’s like, no, no, no, like, we’ve gone down this rabbit hole. Like, let’s turn around, and let’s see if there’s another path, you know, and I think that that’s… I think that’s something that it’s hard. It’s hard to teach people that to, like, you know, to be able to kind of like pull out of because it becomes an identity. And then what do you do when you have an identity, you know, like I am, it’s really hard to change that sort of thing. The other thing is personality, like personality types and diets aren’t really like, looked at as much as I think they probably should be, because they’re just some people who can get up every morning at the same time, they can run for 45 minutes at the same park. They can do all these amazing things. And these are some of the people who are teaching diet, right? And so if they’re telling you like, you just have to eat this one thing every day, prepare your meals on Sunday, do all the things. Like that’s amazing. Like, I wish I could do that. Like, I would love to be able to do that. It would make everything so easy. It’s just like wearing the same clothing every day, you know, like the Steve Jobs thing, like, please just let it… do it. But I can’t do that, like I am, like, I’m all over the map and wild, right? I need like, all different experiences, all different types of things. So that system doesn’t work for me. So what’s the system that works for me? It’s like, alright, it’s that… is that not moderation that you were talking about? Like, Yeah, can I, you know, do at getting into the Pareto rule? Can I do like, you know, 80%… get 20%… get 80% results, like something like that, you know what I mean? The rest of it, just let me be free, because I can’t fall into the category of the every day, same thing over and over.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Well, and that’s a nice thing about even, you know, there were some people that when paleo first came out, were super hardcore about it. But it was never intended to be that way. It was intended to be like, Okay, for those of us and Robb, my co-author and the author of The Paleo Solution, he and I are both like autoimmune, crazy gut reactions to lots of foods. He and I have to be like, 90%, Paleo with the exception of like, some gluten free chips or whatever, here and there. But you know, the average person can just kind of like 80/20, stay in that zip code, and just be reasonable. And so therefore, it doesn’t need to be a dogma. It’s like a zip code, right? Like, just kind of like, circulate around the Paleo zip code. Okay.
Kevin Gianni
Yeah, like that zip code. That’s good – 90210
Diana Rodgers, RD
So there’s probably a lot of people that have no idea. Oh, no, they came out with another version of that show. Like..
Kevin Gianni
Oh they did?
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. And yeah, there was like a second version of like, the kids.
Kevin Gianni
I don’t know. I don’t know. I just watch documentaries.
Diana Rodgers, RD
It’s probably a good call. So talk a little bit about how you created this company. So I mean, obviously, you… so you partnered with somebody. You kind of went to them. They were already making other products. And you said we’d like to do a line. Is that yeah, how it kind of started?
Kevin Gianni
So she was making a spa line. And she was just like, I just do spas, and we’re like, Okay, well, do you want to partner with us? And we’ll do it and she’s like, I don’t know. Like, I’m just doing the spas and this is kind of my thing. She was kind of a small, just a small little manufacturer. So we’re just like, alright, you know, that’s fine. We’ll just promote your spa line on our show and, and that’s it cool. You know, like your products are great. We’re not going to like let that stop us from doing anything. About I don’t know, if it’s a couple of weeks or a couple months later, like she called up and she’s like, You know what? Let’s do something, you know, I saw your video, like, you sold some products like, let’s see what we can do here. And so at first we were private labeling one or two of her products. And then from there, as we got our feet, kind of like wet doing the actual skincare part of it, because we’re into health. So like, we knew all that kind of like, even if it was vegan, like we knew like all the kinds of categories of health that kind of needed to be to be done. We knew high quality product. We just knew all that sort of stuff. Because we were sourcing different… we’re sourcing cinnamon from down in Costa Rica, we’re sourcing Munia, which is an Indian mint from Peru. So we’ve gone there and like, done it and like seeing the thing. And so we knew how to do that sort of thing. And so we started to have our input, and then it kind of actually turned into us influencing what she did for her spa line. Just because Rachel in particular, our COO, she just has such a such a knack for finding the ingredients that actually are pure and natural, and then making sure they stay that way. I think this is kind of a really important thing to note is every once in a while, you’ll follow up with a manufacturer, you know, hey, you know, you’re still like, doing the same thing. And they’ll be like, yeah, let me check. And then, you know, the phone call back is like, oh, no, we switched it to something else. So, like, we’ve been caught in instances where the manufacturer, you know, the manufacturer of the larger good, right? They’ve just changed where they got it from. And so then we have to go back and look. And so now we have an audit process, because we just… we can’t, like I can’t tolerate that. I can’t… I mean, whether they’re doing it intentionally or not, I don’t think anyone’s really doing a lot of this stuff intentionally. I think it’s just like… it’s not it… it’s an ignorance to it. We have this auditing process where you have to go through it, and we have to make sure it’s like, Are you sure you’re still not using nanoparticles for your, you know, your silicates or anything? Like, you know what I mean? It’s just like… it’s like, why do we have to ask this, but we do, you know and we really, you know, it’s really important to keep doing it. Because they might change it just right underneath you. And what’s cool that we’ve done over time is we’ve created are now sourcing, we will source things from smaller farms and make sure that we know where that’s going. And then we’ve also… we have 44 acres here in Connecticut, where we started a little farmlet where the last two years, and Annmarie has grown herbs to put into steep into the products to create our estate blend. So we have an estate oil and then we were having a… it’s a sugar scrub that’s coming out shortly that the herbs are grown here. We can’t do the seed oils. I mean, I don’t even know what that would look like that would be that’d be brutal. I don’t know how many acres you need for that type of flow or even climate. But the herbs that we have, have been putting the product and it’s remarkable to think like now knowing from start to finish, which is we’ve never done start to finish before and now that now that we have, man, it’s hard work. It’s like really, really hard work. And I can and I understand why people don’t do it. Yeah, it’s really hard. There’s a lot of work into it, things fail. You know, deer eat the plants that they’re not supposed to eat, like the deer resistant plants. You know, that’s just you know…
Diana Rodgers, RD
A deer salad bar.
Kevin Gianni
It is deer salad bar. So they love it, you know,
Diana Rodgers, RD
So and deer fencing is expensive. I don’t know if you’ve looked into it, but you know, I have a little bit of a farming background deer fencing is expensive, but it does sometimes work.
Kevin Gianni
Yeah, I mean, yeah, we have some areas here that we’re gonna fence this year, just because, again, we thought that, you know, deer-resistant meant deer-resistant.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah. Well, I mean, the other issue is that there are too many deer. Yeah, we need more hunters, which people don’t like because they don’t… they don’t like it. So that yeah, it’s a huge problem. Yeah.
Kevin Gianni
I’ve not hunted yet. Annmarie has said and I kind of feel the same way. They’re like our neighbors. You know what I mean? Like, they kind of wander on our property. So they’re our neighbors. It’s like, it’s okay to go to someone else’s property. And like, maybe try it, but like our property. It’s like there are people. So I don’t know, it’s a weird, human psychological thing that’s going on there. But I think we’ll figure it out eventually. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
So right now people can find your products mostly just through your website. Do you retail them anywhere as well?
Kevin Gianni
We retail in some small shops around the country, but it’s all direct to consumer at annmairegianni.com. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Okay, cool. Yeah. All right. Well, and you’ve got multiple lines. So you’ve got… and all kinds of things. You’ve got cleansers, exfoliants, a lovely mask that doesn’t like dry out your face like crazy. It just is like moisturizing and I have it’s a small jar that it’s like, has a really luscious texture to it again, like it has this amazing feel. What is it?
Kevin Gianni
Pearl Mask. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Yeah, yeah, Pearl Mask. Yep. Love it. Twice a week.
Kevin Gianni
It’s awesome. I love masking day. I got like… I don’t know if I look the part but like, but masking, the scrub like I love the scrub. Like just like with the cleanser? Yeah, a couple times a week. It’s just it makes a difference. Yeah.
Diana Rodgers, RD
And I don’t know, we may have… if people go to the show notes on my website, there may be some kind of discount that we’re running. I’m not remembering off the top of my head if we have something with you. But, check the show notes for any specials.
Kevin Gianni
I’m sure there’s something. If there’s not, we’ll make it.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Okay. Sounds good. All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. It’s always fun to learn how people got into this and also the conversion away from a diet that wasn’t working for you. So congratulations for finding the right path and for becoming an herb farmer and everything. It’s been really great to chat with you.
Kevin Gianni
Yeah, it’s been great chatting with you too. Thanks for having me on.
Diana Rodgers, RD
Thanks so much for listening today and for following my work. If you believe in making sure that people all over the world should have access to nutritious food, please join my mission through my non-profit, the Global Food Justice Alliance. Visit sustainabledish.com/join and become a sustaining member today. All sustaining members get early access to ad-free podcasts plus free downloads, and you’ll be helping get healthy protein like meat, fish, and eggs to food-insecure kids. That’s sustainabledish.com/join. And thank you.
