S9 Ep13: Seaweed: The Secret to Menopausal Symptom Relief with Sachi Singh
“Seaweed is an essential ingredient.” —Sachi Singh
Seaweed may be one of the most overlooked superfoods on the planet. This nutrient-dense aquatic plant is a true powerhouse, packed with protein, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and bioactive compounds that can work wonders for our health. Yet, many of us relegate seaweed to the occasional sushi roll or salad garnish, failing to recognize its full potential.
Led by its Founder, Sachi Singh, Rootless is on a mission to mainstream the health and sustainability benefits of seaweed. With a background in climate and ocean solutions, Sachi is passionate about using seaweed to help women navigate menopausal symptoms while creating a more regenerative food system.
Elevate your wellness routine and the planet's future as Justine and Sachi share why eating seaweed is beneficial for thyroid health, how seaweed can alleviate menopausal symptoms, tips for building a strong brand and product development team, how we can invest in a greener future, and Sachi’s advice for new founders.
Connect with Sachi:
Sachi Singh is the Founder and CEO of Rootless, a mission-driven food company on a mission to make seaweed an essential part of the American diet. With over a decade of experience in the climate and ocean space, Sachi is passionate about developing sustainable, nutrient-dense solutions that benefit both human and planetary health.
As a first-time founder, Sachi has built Rootless from the ground up, leveraging her background in environmental management and her family's roots in the "food as medicine" philosophy. Under her leadership, Rootless has developed a line of seaweed-based snacks that are helping women navigate the hormonal changes of menopause through the power of this ancient superfood.
Sachi is committed to creating a more equitable and regenerative food system, and she continues to be a vocal advocate for increasing access to sustainable, bioavailable nutrition. With Rootless, she is on a mission to change the way people think about and consume seaweed.
Episode Highlights:
00:28 Seaweed Essential Ingredient
06:24 A Regenerative Food Crop for Climate Solution
13:28 Seaweeds as Medicine
19:51 Founder Things
26:07 Put Your Money Where Your Values Are
Resources:
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Tweets:
Dive into the ocean's superfood - seaweed! @jreichman and Rootless Founder, Sachi Singh discuss how this nutrient-dense powerhouse is a game-changer for our health and the planet’s. #podcast #entrepreneurship #socialgood #inspiration #impactmatters #NextGenChef #EssentialIngredients #Season9 #GetRootless #Seaweed #seaweedlover #SeaweedSuperfood #SustainableNutrition #NaturalWellness #MenopauseRelief #IodineBoost #EmpoweringFounders #InvestWithValues
Inspirational Quotes:
00:35 “Seaweed is an essential ingredient.” —Sachi Singh
01:52 “Investing in self-care is investing in planetary care.” —Sachi Singh
07:45 “Seaweed as a regular part of the American diet was the intention.” —Sachi Singh
10:19 “Seaweed was not built in a lab. Seaweed is not new. It is literally one of the world's oldest foods. There's all of this rich cultural, historical legacy around seaweed being used as a food and medicine.” —Sachi Singh
13:36 “As a founder, in the early days, it is your job to be the first line of communication.” —Sachi Singh
20:04 “Lean into the naivety of the early days where you don't know what it takes to be a founder because it is hard. If I knew then what I knew now, I would have thought three times harder about taking this leap.” —Sachi Singh
20:20 “As a founder myself, I don't think I could see myself anywhere else. There's nothing else that's going to motivate me as much to get up in the morning to do what I do.” —Justine Reichman
23:05 “This is not just a product. This is a brand universe that we're building.” —Sachi Singh
23:53 “It's hard to innovate in a system that is not built for you.” —Sachi Singh
25:50 “To share those stories can empower, even if it's just one, to go off and do it themselves or think a little differently.” —Justine Reichman
26:35 “Put your money where your values are. Invest in companies and entrepreneurs with a mission and vision. To do that, we need to think about capital differently.” —Sachi Singh
27:37 “You're an investor and a change-maker with your vote, with your wallet. Vote with your values and invest with your values.” —Sachi Singh
28:38 “Often, people feel like they have to change everything to do it. And that's a misconception. We just need to do what we can.” —Justine Reichman
30:33 “Ask for help and receive it, and you'll go much farther.” —Sachi Singh
30:58 “Try and be intentional about the fuel that you're putting into your body. Your body works hard for you. Take care of it.” —Sachi Singh
Transcriptions:
Justine Reichman: Good morning, and welcome to Essential Ingredients. I'm your host, Justine Reichman. With me today is Sachi Singh. She's the founder and CEO of Rootless. I'm super excited to have you here. Welcome.
Sachi Singh: Thank you, Justine. I am thrilled to be here, and the goal is to make sure that everyone can come away from it thinking seaweed is an essential ingredient. So perfect.
“Seaweed is an essential ingredient.” —Sachi Singh
Justine Reichman: Seaweed is an essential ingredient, okay.
Sachi Singh: The essential ingredient. The essential ingredient.
Justine Reichman: For those folks, because we're just getting to know you, and I want the community to get to know you, if you would just introduce yourself, and maybe 30 seconds on what Rootless is.
Sachi Singh: Sure, happy to. I am originally from India. Growing up in the food is medicine philosophy, it's so funny when your mother and grandmother tell you things as a child and it never sticks. And then you become an adult, and you're like, ah, they were right all along. So life has come full circle where now I'm building a food as medicine solution to help women navigate major hormonal changes through their life, starting with menopause. So I started Rootless really as a way to get more people to eat and grow sustainable seaweed. And a journey I'm sure we're gonna talk about that has led us to this really interesting and exciting place where we're really helping women navigate menopausal symptoms. So that's the sort of focus area for now, and it's a really interesting space because it's one of the few spaces in which our tagline is investing in self care, investing in planetary care. The more demand we can build for the essential regenerative ingredient that is seaweed, the more value we can create in that regenerative supply chain. So that's sort of the ethos behind Rootless.
Justine Reichman: Thanks for sharing that. That's super interesting. I know myself, my mom was always about eating what makes you feel good, and paying attention to that. And while it was not necessarily from the eastern philosophy, it was just from the mindful philosophy, if you will, before we were calling it mindful. So I'm curious a little bit more about your background. Why seaweed? And why menopause?
Sachi Singh: My favorite question. Seaweed was intense.
Justine Reichman: Let's have seaweed. We'll start with seaweed, then we'll move on.
Sachi Singh: Sounds good. It's interesting too, because you will get a flavor of both. Seaweed was intentional, menopause was emergent. So a nice little juxtaposition there. So why seaweed? I have spent my life in the climate and ocean space. So pretty early in my career, I stumbled into climate change as an industry. And for over 13, 14, years, I have been working on international climate change solutions. And even when I started, I think I was 19 at the time, I realized that this is the space I want to be in. This is the impact that I want to have. How do I, as a person, make the most leveraged impact in the space of in the industry of climate solutions? So I've explored different levers. The lever of think tanks, the lever of policy, the lever of academia. I got my master's in environmental management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. I worked in philanthropy. I was kind of doing a little bit of everything, getting a taste of where I could apply my skill set and passion. And on this journey, I discovered seaweed.
Actually, it was in Kiribati, which is the most remote, least developed country in the world. Fascinating place. I kind of saw my first seaweed farm there and started to think about seaweed. And it was truly the first systems level solution that I had come across in my decade of doing this work. It is one of the most nutrient dense and diverse foods on the planet. It has this incredible nutrition profile. Each species has a slightly different nutrition profile. But broadly, we're talking high quality protein, dietary fiber, vitamins, minerals, trace elements, the bioactives that are actually being studied for their impact on metabolic syndrome disease. And it's interesting, because the research shows that seaweed has nutritive properties that actually reduce the incidence of metabolic syndrome disease.
You can find seaweed in the Blue Zones. You can find seaweed as part of the traditional diet in Okinawa, Japan and Korea where people are living longer and healthier lives. So when I came to it, I was like, this is the most incredible healthy thing that we're not eating. We all need to eat more of it, and as a crop. As a food crop. It's a zero input regenerative food crop, which means unlike any sort of land based agriculture, it doesn't require fresh water, fertilizer, pesticides, or even land to grow as if it's growing. It's actively regenerating the environment. So it's making oceans healthier. It provides standing structure for marine biodiversity providing access to livelihoods for coastal communities, fishing communities, lobster communities that are getting ravaged by climate change. So I started to go down this rabbit hole and I was like, this is win, win, win. This is the coolest, most sustainable foundation for the future of food, I think, and the future of farming. So how do we make it sexy? How do we put brand, storytelling and marketing, and create a product that can help people access the health benefits of seaweed regardless of whether they like the taste or not, and then I can do all of the unsexy work on the on the back end to ensure that the seaweed is responsibly harvested and sustainably sourced.
Justine Reichman: I actually love seaweed. I used to go to Japanese restaurants and just eat seaweed, and then I'd buy it at home and have it as a snack. A little salty. It's just that perfect snack that I used to love to carry around even as a child. I liked it. That was weird. Interesting probably because I started eating sushi at a very early age, and you have that as part of a role or something so I would become more familiar with it. But my question to you is, the way that you thought about this was as a climate solution, as a way to offer people a healthy solution that was not only healthy for them, but also regenerative, and sort of educate them on the way as to why this is such a good product. Am I correct?
Sachi Singh: Exactly.
Justine Reichman: So with that in mind, you build this product to deliver something that was better for you, better for the planet, and you achieve those things. But then you come across menopause, and how did you connect this product as a resource for menopause? And before we get into that, I just want to show folks that are watching this, what the product looks like. So for those viewing this, it looks like this, and it comes in a variety of flavors. So this one is the double strawberry. We have the coconut chai, we have the cinnamon, crunch, the orange pistachio and the cacao crunch. And so as I'm eating this, I'm eating it because it's healthy, and because I want to have all these benefits. And then you connect that it's impactful for menopause. So tell me, how did you find that out? What was the impetus to even, was it okay, there's a chicken and egg thing. Did you come up with the idea about menopause? Or were you experiencing, or somebody was experiencing this as a resource or something as a way to deal with symptoms from menopause?
Sachi Singh: Great question. This is what a little bit of what I was foreshadowing with the intention versus the emergent seaweed as a regular part of the American diet was the intention. Oh, good. We're getting a live reaction here from Justine.
Justine Reichman: I love the taste of seaweed.
Sachi Singh: I love that.
Justine Reichman: Then you mix it with the cacao or the chocolate, or the dates or the orange, it becomes a little sweet, a little savory.
Sachi Singh: Exactly, the perfect combination. It kind of guts the sweetness of the dates too. So it's not cloyingly sweet. I love dates. I think so many people love dates, but it gets chloe at the end. So I think the umami cuts it a little bit.
Justine Reichman: So that was the pistachio, which I'm a huge fan of. Okay, so go on.
Sachi Singh: So none of us, no, no. All good. We got a live reaction, which is the best. So menopause, oh, gosh. While mainstreaming seaweed into the American diet, particularly trying to get it into the daily diet. That really was the intention since day one, which is actually even how I designed the product. Actually, I'm currently in my brother's apartment because I'm nomadic for the summer as I was sharing with you. In this kitchen, we developed the scratch recipe of the product. So I was just tinkering around and I was like, how do we get people to access the health benefits regardless of whether they like the taste or not? Because a lot of people in America and the West don't like the taste of seaweed. So bioavailable, minimally processed daily dose, that was the behavior that I was trying to encourage. And all of the research around seaweed has been really fascinating to follow. There's all of this work that's being done around studying the bioactives in seaweed, fucoidan, fucoxanthin, porphyrin, for their anti carcinogenic, anti tumor, antiviral, anti microbial, antibacterial properties. There's all of this work around nutrient density and diversity. It's filling gaps in the Western diet. It is this incredible potent, bioavailable source of iodine.
“Seaweed was not built in a lab. Seaweed is not new. It is literally one of the world's oldest foods. There's all of this rich cultural, historical legacy around seaweed being used as a food and medicine.” —Sachi Singh
So there's the seaweed species that we're using, which is a red species that has actually been studied for its impact on colon cancer cells. And there's actually studies, and I can send you all of this research to show that when the bioactive porphyrin actually kills the colon cancer cells in vitro, in cells. There's all of this interesting research. And the thing that I personally love about it in the Indian as an ingredient story is that seaweed was not built in a lab. Seaweed is not new. It is literally one of the world's oldest foods. There's all of this rich cultural, historical legacy around seaweed being used as a food, seaweed being used as a medicine in East Asia, in the Scandinavian, in Viking culture. It shows up in different places, in mythology, storytelling and folklore. And one instance that I love is after a Korean, even till today, part of the cultural tradition of Korean families is that after a Korean mother has given birth, the first thing that she is fed is a seaweed soup because it actually replenishes all of the stuff that you lost in that traumatic birthing event because it's mineral dense, nutrient dense and nutrient diverse, et cetera. So all of these beautiful stories kind of popped up. And when I designed the product and went to the market, my hypothesis was, people basically know seaweed is good for them. This is just an easy, convenient, no fuss way for you to integrate it into your daily diet. So super interesting.
We went out with a pretty broad messaging, untargeted messaging. We were like, anyone can benefit from the health benefits that seaweed provides. And then we started to see customer, after customer, after customer coming in with these really heavy, big, compelling testimonials of how the bites were making them feel. I have a boost of energy, or I'm less dry. It wasn't kind of a functional benefit in that way. I am less tired so I can insert activity here. I am less tired so I can work out more. So I lost five pounds. I am less tired so I can work my shift at the ER. I'm less tired so I'm sleeping better. I'm less tired so I'm swapping out my second cup of coffee a day, and I'm less dry. These bites have cured my perimenopausal acne. These bites have melted the weight off of my body. So all of these interesting things started to come through. And when we actually looked back into the data, we found that women, particularly over 40, were feeling the benefits in a different way. And coming back, that was the stickiest consumer cohort. I would say intentional pivot happened about seven or eight months ago.
This happened between the August and October time frame from 2023. So that's when we actually started to dig into the data. Do subscriber interviews, understand who this customer is, why she's coming back, and we found that she's actually a woman trying to manage her perimenopause or post menopause symptoms naturally, or in addition to hormone replacement therapy or anything else that she's doing. So going back to this idea of intentional versus emergent, the menopausal woman showed herself, or the perimenopausal woman showed herself in the data as the woman who was really resonating with and feeling the benefits in a way that was leading to the stickiest consumer behavior. And I can share more about why we've been on this learning journey with her.
Justine Reichman: So when you get this information, you're taking this information and are doing it through surveys. How are you getting this information to be able to make these kinds of larger statements and realizations?
Sachi Singh: So the customer, I actually, personally have always been very close to my customers. I actually think that, as a Founder in the early days, it is your job to be the first line of communication. I know a lot of them by name, and we are writing to each other all the time so I'm pretty close with my customer base. I did a lot of one on one interviews. We've done a ton of surveys and feedback surveys, product market surveys. But this is to add a qualitative layer of context on top of just data, because we have customers who have been in our consumer base or in our subscription program since January of 2022, which is when we started. So that's like 15, 16, months of subscription for a single SKU product. That's pretty unheard of, I think, in this day and age. And it's because people are really feeling the impact. So once we started to add this layer of qualitative data on top of quantitative data, we went all the way back to product principle, product design. And we worked with a product developer, we worked with a nutritionist, we worked with a naturopath. My chief of staff, who actually introduced me to you, is a traditional Chinese medicine doctor and acupuncturist. We started to peel back what exactly is happening here, and we stumbled upon something super interesting. So we know that seaweed is the most bioavailable, potent natural source of iodine. And iodine is what your thyroid organ needs to make T3 and T4 hormones. Every single cell in your body uses T3 and T4 hormones to convert food into energy. So the thyroid is actually like the master battery of your body. If that baby is not charged with iodine, with dietary iodine, everything is just working less efficiently. You're like biking harder, but your tires are flat. Interestingly, because we're not using iodized salt in our diet anymore. We're all kind of on the verge of iodine deficiency, all of us. So I'm curious, actually Justine, what kind of salt you use in your cooking?
Justine Reichman: I don't use kosher salt. I don't use anything like that. I'm all about the sea salt, the Himalayan pink sea salt, the Celtic sea salt, the black salt. But there's also nitrates in it. One of them is in there. I always get them confused, but I do not use that.
Sachi Singh: That's a cultural thing too. Pardon me for saying this, but it's true. Samin Nostrat in her Salt Fat Acid Heat Show actually says, throw your table salt because it tastes metallic. There's an aftertaste to it,, and we don't like the taste of it anymore. That's because table salt has been fortified with iodine. And the reason that countries who actually mandated countries fortify their salt with iodine is because the symptoms of iodine deficiency are actually quite severe for women, specifically. So if you're not getting enough iodine, you're chronically fatigued, your thyroid could be subclinically malfunctioning. You're dry everywhere, dry hair, dry eyes, dry skin. There's stubborn weight gain that happens in your midsection, and it's super interesting actually because the symptoms of perimenopause and the symptoms of hypothyroidism, or low iodine thyroid issues mirror each other. So as you're getting older, as your thyroid is actually starting to age as do all organs, you're actually able to uptake, absorb and use less iodine. And if you're already iodine deficient, that starts to become a problem. Your bare amount of muscle symptoms actually start to get exacerbated. So what this product does is give you your daily bioavailable dose of iodine through seaweed, along with all the other good stuff that it's filling as gaps in your diet, and that is actually helping your body heal itself. And there's all of this research to suggest actually that, women particularly, are iodine deficient these days, particularly in the US. And some papers actually call for a public health intervention, because it's not to be taken lightly.
Justine Reichman: How does one check for iodine? Is it just checking for hypothyroidism? Or what is the way to check for that?
Sachi Singh: It's a pee test. So you can test how much iodine is in your pee, urine test
Justine Reichman: How often do doctors just randomly do that? Is that something we have to ask for?
Sachi Singh: You do. And actually, I would also recommend the other thing that doctors don't do is test all. I think there's five tests you have to do to check the full holistic picture of your thyroid health. And doctors typically just test for DSH levels. But actually, you need to get five different data points for you to get a holistic sense of what your thyroid is doing.
Justine Reichman: If somebody that was listening wanted to investigate this, what would they ask their doctor to make sure that they got that?
Sachi Singh: Full thyroid panel, so T3, T4, your antibody tests as well. You can do an iodine pee test, but it's not necessary. I think the thyroid test will actually give you a good sense of how your thyroid is working, and what the uptake of iodine is.
Justine Reichman: That's great information. I know as I'm sitting here listening, and I'm like, I wonder if I have that? I have a little bloat here, and I have a little that are any of these symptoms, something that relate to that, and I'd love to go figure it out. So I appreciate you sharing that and breaking it down so we know how to move forward with it. And it would be interesting also to go get those tests to see what they are, and then to eat my root list and see the impact. I can feel the impact immediately. What a great way to be able to create more testimonials and opportunities totally due to the product. So when you started this company, you were connecting your family values, what you grew up with, your experiences, along with your personal passion for food as medicine, and your experience in school and everything else. But was this your first time doing a startup?
Sachi Singh: Yes, first time Founder.
Justine Reichman: Oh, my God, that's exciting.
Sachi Singh: Sure. It's great. It's great. It's challenging.
Justine Reichman: Did you always know you wanted to start your own business?
Sachi Singh: Absolutely not.
Justine Reichman: What did you think you were going to do initially?
Sachi Singh: I don't know. I don't know. I was sort of guided by passion and the need and want to make an impact. And I just kind of found myself healthier. And I have to say, for all founders or any future founders listening, lean into the naivety of the early days where you really don't know what it takes to be a founder, because it is hard. If I knew then what I know now, I would have thought three times harder about sleeping. But I'm glad I didn't. And I'm glad I'm here.
Justine Reichman: As a founder myself, I don't think I could see myself anywhere else. There's nothing else that's going to motivate me as much to get up in the morning to do what I do. And I don't know if that's a luxury or if that's just the way we planned it. And it's innate in our personality that we want to make the world a better place, we need to make a living, and that's what drives us.
“As a founder myself, I don't think I could see myself anywhere else. There's nothing else that's going to motivate me as much to get up in the morning to do what I do.” —Justine Reichman
Sachi Singh: Totally. I love that. For you, I feel the same way.
Justine Reichman: So when you started this company, and you are the founder, what was it like as you're building this product? Because a product takes money and resources. You had to create recipes. There was a lot that went into this. I know that while it leaned into your passion, there were probably some skills that maybe you found you needed an expert. So what did you do at that point as a new founder, and you're trying to build this business between whether you self fund or you fundraise. Can you walk me through that a little bit? What did that journey look like for you?
Sachi Singh: Totally bringing the product to market was a steep learning curve. All of it was new to me because I haven't cut my teeth in anything related to product, startups or food. So I had raised a friends and family pre seed round which allowed me to hire experts to help me commercialize.
Justine Reichman: Before you go on for that, you raise friends and family. So some of the founders that we have come on don't necessarily even know how to raise friends and family. And going to friends and family can be intimidating, or you feel awkward. So how did you approach that?
Sachi Singh: I actually was in a unique position because my dad is a venture capitalist in India, and he actually is my secret weapon. I actually finally put him on my deck publicly. I put him on my advisory board because he has grown. and he has now under his belt a couple of unicorns. And he comes from the consumer. He invests in digitally native companies. So he was my patron saint, if you will, which a lot of people don't have access to. So I have to say, I definitely had a leg up. And he's my secret weapon co founder that doesn't give me stress, which I love. And I'm very grateful. He really helped me in the early days, flatten my learning curve, and helped me figure out how to build this business and the things to kind of build around. So one of the big early decisions that I made was I wanted this to be a brand. We invested a lot in terms of time and money. Actually, my branding partners are on my cap table. They're actually equity partners of mine, red antler. I knew early on that this is not just a product. This is a brand universe that we're building. And I think having that philosophy early on was really helpful, and really steadied us as we built and navigated definitely in a unique privileged position to be able to do that. We just closed our crowdfunding campaign that I shared with you, so we had the resource to be able to go and hire exports to help us, or help me flatten that learning curve.
Justine Reichman: So when you first did this, you were self funded in the beginning, and then you went off to go do a friends and family, and then you went to go to institutional money. So what do you think the journey would have been like if you didn't have access to somebody like your dad? What do you think the greatest challenge would have been?
Sachi Singh: We're facing this now as well. It's really hard to innovate in a system that is not built for you. I personally just as a human don't have any networks here. I'm an immigrant. I was only able to access entrepreneurship after I got my green card, which took me over a decade to get. So there's a lot of gates, and communities are gated. And I went to a League school. I had access in so many ways, but I was also denied access in many ways. So I'm also not a white man. So in the VC funding stats when they say that less than 2% of VC money goes to female founded companies, I don't think they have stats about immigrants, people of color. Very small percentage of the population that's getting funding. So where we are today is where I would have been three years ago, which is just going out and finding the patron saints, finding people who really believe in you and the thing that you're doing, and the thing that you're building, and are actually along for the ride. We're literally creating a new system of capital. The value chain to bring this product to market, every single thing is new. And the only reason we've been able to do it in three years, three and a half years is because we have access to capital in the first place. So I think this would have gotten built regardless. It would have just taken more time.
Justine Reichman: And it's a luxury. To be able to have those resources, what we want to do with this podcast is give people access to that information so they can make more informed choices for themselves. So because some are being born and raised in New York, I look at all the entrepreneurs that own the bodegas. It's not a CPG product, but there are entrepreneurs, nonetheless, on every other corner that are owning those bodegas. There's lots of different kinds of entrepreneurs, and I think that it's really to share those stories can empower, even if it's just one, to go off and do it themselves, or change the way they're thinking, or their narrative, or maybe empower them to think a little differently, and think it's possible because it is overwhelming and really intimidating.
“Put your money where your values are. Invest in companies and entrepreneurs with a mission and vision. To do that, we need to think about capital differently.” —Sachi Singh
Sachi Singh: Thinking about systems of capital a little bit more creatively is also something that we should think and talk about more. I think all the work that's being done with regulation, it's called Reg CF, Regulation CrowdFunding instrument, with Kickstarter, with all of these ways where you're actually inviting people to be a part of your journey. You're giving them equity, or making the race accessible. You're actually showing people that you can put your money where your values are. You can actually invest in companies and entrepreneurs in mission and vision, early pre seed, pre institutional funding ideas that can help them take the system to the next level and build something that's truly innovative. I'm actually, personally, so tired of another, this is just my bias, but like another better for you cookie or another better for you drink brand, I'm just like, let's do something new where let's fight the climate crisis. Let's build a new system of capital that's worthy of investment, in my opinion, not just another generative AI company that's making images. And to do that, I think we need to think about capital differently.
Justine Reichman: And so with that being said, how can we communicate that differently to people so that they can understand that? If you could say it in the perfect way because I'm putting you on the spot, what would that look like?
Sachi Singh: I encourage people to think about themselves as investors. So you're an investor and a changemaker with your vote, you're an investor in changemaker. With your wallet, vote with your values, and invest with your values. Buy from small brands, support companies that you love. I'm an Amazon shopper, so I'm saying it's hypocritical for me to say that I don't use that platform. But if there's ways I can avoid it and actually use my dollar to invest in an economy that is supporting my values and allow me to even see myself as a shareholder, as an investor in the system, my buy in and inclination to be part of the change, I think, is a little bit higher and greater. So my quick synopsis is you're an investor already participating in the consumer economy. You're an investor. Be intentional about what you're investing in. Invest with your values.
Justine Reichman: That's perfect. I love that. And I think that that really gives people a clear direction. This is how you can make a change. And I think the one thing often that people feel is they have to change everything to do it. And I think that that's a misconception. I think we all need to do what we can. And I think you have to decide if climate and food is important to you, and you focus on that doesn't mean you need to focus on 12 other things. Because then, you're spreading it together, or you feel like you're not successful, or you're not making a great enough impact. So I think my biggest takeaway is to, like you said, to invest with your values and look at that as the impact you're making and your legacy behind you. If it's too spread out, if it's too disparate, right? It's harder to feel that impact that you're making, and that focus has really been sort of diluted in a way that's not quite as impactful. You're still making an impact. Don't get me wrong, but I think it's really hard to achieve that feeling of success and that this is what I focus on, and this is what I'm hoping to support. And then to follow that niche and that industry, to see how that's being changed for the future.
Sachi Singh: And then you become an expert, and then you bring your friends in. There's actually a system level network effect that starts to happen when you get really invested in something. So I love that, actually.
Justine Reichman: Thank you so much for joining us. I just want to ask, as we close out here, for those new entrepreneurs or people that are building their business with the experience that you had in these past months building this business, can you share two or three things that you've learned that you didn't know before that you could share with the listeners so that maybe they can have a few tips to walk away with?
“Try and be intentional about the fuel that you're putting into your body. Your body works hard for you. Take care of it.” —Sachi Singh
Sachi Singh: Oh, such a great question. I would say, ask for help and receive help. People want to help you, and I think that's something that I struggled with. I was like, I need to be the perfect leader, founder, manager. But ask for help and receive it, and you'll go much farther. I would say the second thing is lean into and continue to be naive about the future like I want everyone to feel hopeful and naive. There's a better, more sustainable future that we can all build. And I would love for people to kind of hold on to that hope. And then my third call to action would be, your food is your medicine so try and be intentional about the fuel that you're putting into your body. Your body looks really hot for you. Please take care of it. And hopefully, you'll need some seaweed and feel your best awesome.
Justine Reichman: Sachi, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for the product. And by the way, the two that I have here, I really like the orange pistachio. I think they're both good, but I really like the orange pistachio. There's something about it. I like the hint of citrus with the seaweed, with the sweet. It's really well balanced.
Sachi Singh: Thank you so much.
Justine Reichman: We want to hear from everyone that's watching that when they go get their Rootless, where can they find this product?
Sachi Singh: So www.getrootless.com.
Justine Reichman: Awesome. So for those folks interested in trying the product, check it out and then leave us a message. Let us know what your favorite flavor is. Look forward to hearing from you.
Sachi Singh: Thank you, Justine. What a pleasure.
Justine Reichman: Thanks so much. Bye.
