Lauren Stenger: Welcome back to another episode of Double Take. Today I'm here with Danielle DuBoise, the co-founder of Sakara Life. Danielle, thank you so much for being here.
Danielle DuBoise: Thanks for having me, Lauren.
Lauren Stenger: I'm really excited to get to know you and learn all about your journey. So before we dive into all things Sakara, do you mind briefly introducing yourself for those who are new?
Do you mind introducing yourself for those who are new?
Danielle DuBoise: Sure. My name is Danielle, and I started Sakara Life fifteen years ago now. Sixteen if you count the year of blood, sweat and tears to even come to the conclusion that I could build a business. I started it with my best friend Whitney Tingle. We grew up together in Sedona, Arizona, and fifteen years later we're still in love with Sakara and her mission and believe in it more than ever.
Lauren Stenger: So back in 2012, and the years leading up to that, what was the catalyst for you and Whitney to launch Sakara? Was it something you guys were thinking about for a while? Did it kind of happen all at once?
Why did you and Whitney create Sakara Life?
Danielle DuBoise: Well, because Whitney and I had grown up together, we kinda knew what the other was going through. We were living together in New York City, and we both hit a rock bottom together. We're very lucky it happened together. Whitney's story is she had been dealing with cystic acne since she was quite young, like eleven or twelve, and it was really painful and it was, you know, cysts just all over her face and it really affected her life. She tried everything from Accutane and rounds and rounds of antibiotics to crazy lasers, and nothing worked. I had been a yo-yo dieter, my first memory of dieting was at the age of nine, which is wild because I have an eight-year-old now, and I just can't imagine her even thinking that she needed to change the way she looked.
The rock bottom was born out of the fact that Whitney had tried everything; she felt desperate. She'd just recently gone to see another dermatologist, this time in New York City, so she had high hopes, and he just offered her another round of Accutane. For me, I had just come out of this 21-day retreat. It included a water fast and 20 days of eating raw food, and I got really, really sick and I ended up with pneumonia, and I got diagnosed with IBS.
At that same time, I was studying pre-med and I was working in a hospital up in Harlem. I was working the free clinics with a cardiologist, and we were seeing patients with late-stage lifestyle diseases. I just had this really strong inner voice that said, you are on the path of one of these chronic diseases because you have no idea how to take care of yourself. You have no idea how, you have no toolkit to get you to feeling how you feel right now to where you want to be and how you want to feel. So that really pushed me to change my track to nutrition. I studied nutrition and I was really lucky at the time that that was kind of the forefront of the microbiome research, and it was just sort of bubbling up into consumer behavior.
The research around the gut and the microbiome, I think for consumers really linked this notion of what you ingest affects your biology and your physiology. I think it might be hard for people to understand this, but back then, fifteen years ago, even ten years ago, you know, it was still kind of like food was for dieting and it was about calories and macros. This idea of it really affecting your longevity and your lifespan and your health span was still kind of out there. So it really helped me understand that I could change how I felt, I could manage how I felt by deciding what was on my plate.
But then what felt really hard was not what to eat, but how when I didn't have the time to cook, to source all the organic things that I wanted. So Whitney and I decided that we were gonna help each other and I made a meal plan for us. It was like a 30-day meal plan and it was based off of the same pillars we use at Sakara today that are really simple. Things like eat your greens, get enough colors, get healthy sources of fats, and we started cooking for each other and we would kind of share all work and it was just so life-changing.
Within a couple weeks, Whitney's skin, the inflammation in her skin really started to go down, and she'd never seen it change like that in over a decade. For me, it shifted how my entire relationship to food had always been food is the enemy and less is always better and you need to count calories and carbs and points and pounds to have a body that you feel good in. It taught me that food is there to make you feel better, and when you're eating the right foods, you want to make sure you're getting enough. So it really flipped everything I thought I knew about food on its head.
Yeah, so that was how it started. It was really just a meal plan for us. And then slowly but surely we had people around us asking, like, what are you doing? You look different. You look great. Can you make me some food? And then it built up quite quickly from there.
Lauren Stenger: So you said back when you were starting Sakara or changing your lifestyle, you had to rebuild this toolkit and kind of relearn healthy habits. So how do you think you learned these pillars of healthy eating? Do you think that was from your nutrition education or were you pursuing other educational resources, things like that?
What was the process like for building up a toolkit and learning these pillars of health?
Danielle DuBoise: Yeah, I mean, none of it is rocket science, right? And when you actually look at the literature, a lot of it is just catching up to what people have been doing for millennia in Taoist traditions, and the five parts of the tongue, and Ayurvedic traditions, science is really just catching up, but you know, at my heart and my core I am a scientist and so I appreciate that science is catching up and I appreciate the data that comes out of a lot of these studies.
And I think, you know, combining them and also because it's like everybody knows we kind of gotta make sure we get greens every day. I also really want people to understand that nutrition science is extremely complicated and it can never look out for you as an individual because science doesn't know you as an individual. It puts people in cohorts, it puts people in groups, and tries to sort of by process of either elimination or trying to look for a specific outcome, it gets to conclusions which can be helpful, but it is definitely not the whole story. And that common sense and listening to that inner voice, I think, is at least half of it.
So as much as I think relying on the literature can be really helpful, I also really want people to understand what it is to cultivate that body intelligence and that inner voice on how food actually makes you feel.
Lauren Stenger: And why did you and Whitney decide to call it Sakara? I think it's such a beautiful brand name, but what was the origin story behind that?
What is the meaning behind the name Sakara?
Danielle DuBoise: You know, it was a word that really just found us. It's a Sanskrit word and it means the manifestation of Brahman, which is all of that sort of energy out in the ether, how do you pull it into form? How do you take your hopes and dreams and pull it into something that you can touch and taste and feel and see? And for us, this meal program really kind of helped us bring in our hopes and dreams into reality.
I never ever thought that I was gonna heal my relationship to food. I truly never thought I would know what it would feel like to feel really good in my body, really sexy in my skin. That felt so far away for me, and the same for Whitney. She was just like I'm gonna be dealing with acne my whole life. So to pull from somewhere like this dream into reality was really what Sakara was for us. So it felt like the right name. And our hope was that it would help others kind of pull in their hopes and dreams into reality as well.
Lauren Stenger: So you've been leading and growing Sakara for so long now, over a decade. Looking at your time with this company, what are some unexpected lessons you've learned along the way about being a businesswoman and a mother and all the things that come along with it?
What are some unexpected lessons you've learned along the way about being a businesswoman?
Danielle DuBoise: There are so many, Lauren, I don't know where to start. I'd say one of the core ones is just that everything is figure-outable. That's like one of our core mantras, Whitney and I. It's all figure-outable. And as an entrepreneur, you really are just constantly putting out fires. And so I think you have to really ask yourself: is that the personality type you have that can enjoy constantly putting out fires? Because that's really what you're doing. Yes, you get to do strategy and you know, you get to go on podcasts and marketing and brand work, but at the end of the day, that's a small part of what you do and a lot of what you'll be doing and ruminating day-to-day are the fires that you're going to put out.
Having a really positive outlook is really important. Obstacles are opportunities and they're there to learn something even if it's painful. You know, some of our best feedback from clients was really hard to hear but then you know, you listen, and you take it in, and you make changes.
I think the other one that's connected but a little different is just that stamina is most of the game. You decide you're never going to give up, even though sometimes it's felt like maybe we should. I don't think that's everyone's path, but it was certainly ours, like just keep showing up, I think is one of the main reasons we're still here.
Lauren Stenger: I had the founder of Moon Juice on Double Take a couple of months ago and we were talking about the dichotomy of being a wellness entrepreneur because your brand supports a balanced lifestyle, healthy living, all these things. But I feel like the reality is being a businesswoman is a lot of things are out of your control and it's hectic and you're always putting out fires. So I think that can be maybe hard to manage and keep your values intact.
Danielle DuBoise: Yeah, I mean I guess so. I guess I just look at it differently. I don't know what balance is. I have no idea what balance is. It’s an ever moving target and depends on how I feel that day. I think about it more as like, is my cup filled? Meaning like, am I getting more than I'm giving in any given sort of day or stretch of time?
So I have a personality where I really enjoy looking at problems and thinking about how to solve them. It doesn't stress me out. And actually some of my feedback as a leader is like, well, can you focus sometimes on like what's going really well? Because I tend to look at anything and be like, okay, great, this is the problem and let's go fix that.
My cup is really filled by doing that. Now, have I had extremely stressful chapters that have affected my sleep and my wellness? Of course, but I don't think there's a job where you don't face stress. I never take it for granted that my stress is chosen. I choose every day to continue to be a leader at Sakara and I feel very blessed that it is a choice and I don't know any woman whether she's a stay-at-home mom or working, who doesn't face really intense chapters of stress. So I just try and remind myself I'm choosing this and it's all right.
Lauren Stenger: That's what I try to remind myself too, when I feel a little bit overwhelmed. Like it's a privilege to have this stress because I'm grateful for these challenges in my life because it's I'm so lucky to have these opportunities. It’s universal.
Danielle DuBoise: Yeah, exactly. No matter what you're facing, whether it's your career or motherhood or relationships.
Lauren Stenger: So I'm curious to hear more about the logistical side of Sakara. So what's the process of rolling out a new product and the timeline on that? Your products are so aesthetically beautiful and they look perfect and they are perfect.
What's the process like of rolling out a new product?
Danielle DuBoise: Thank you. Yeah, it depends on what it is. So if it's something like a new menu item on our fresh meal program, that usually takes about I'd say anywhere from three to six months. We're vertically integrated, which means we own our manufacturing. So we have a hundred thousand square feet of manufacturing facility and a team and a very big team. So all of our R&D is in house, which is amazing and is another thing I never take for granted because it hasn't always been the case. So innovation can be really fast across our fresh program, which is really nice. We can be seasonal, we can include a new ingredient if we get a call from one of our farmers that they have a really good harvest coming in.
I would say like usually it takes at least three months only because we have to deliver it and test the shelf life. So we have to make sure that whether you live in Oklahoma or Washington or Maine, that the food from New York or Los Angeles is gonna get to you in the way that we want it to.
Now for the products like supplements and powders, that's a much longer lead time. Typically we think of a category and then how we can innovate in that space. So metabolism and gut health tend to be the two categories where people really want Sakara in. Once you think of an active ingredient that then narrows down what your capabilities are.
Some of the actives in our favorite metabolism powder, they can really only be in a powder. They're never gonna work in something like a gummy. Our metabolism gummy has different actives, so it just starts to narrow it down until you figure out what we want to do. It usually takes about a year from that time to then finding the right manufacturing partner because we don't make all of those in-house and then sourcing the raw materials from farmers that we trust. So I'd say it's usually at least a year.
Lauren Stenger: I bet it's cool to work with local farmers. I would enjoy that. I think that would be a really cool collaboration.
Danielle DuBoise: It is, and I think it's also really cool for farmers to see something that they've grown turn into something that's on a shelf, versus just in someone's kitchen, which is also cool, but I think it's cool to just see what they've grown and something that's gonna be on the shelf for months to come.
Lauren Stenger: Yeah, totally. Looking at your career with Sakara, is there a specific milestone that is especially meaningful to you?
Is there a specific milestone with Sakara that is especially meaningful to you?
Danielle DuBoise: Yeah, gosh. I mean, the things that always come to mind are our team. After fifteen years we've had people that have been with us from the beginning. We have people who were with us for seven years and then moved on. Like we've had people with long careers at Sakara.
What I'm most proud of are those people that came and decided to share this mission with us. It's one thing to have an idea and to do all you can to make it real. Then at the end of the day, it's all your team and what they're willing to sort of do and give. I'm so thankful for the people that I've crossed paths with. I'm so thankful for the people that are on our team today.
It's really not easy, none of what we do is easy. Sometimes we joke, it's like, why didn't we just come up with like a sweater company and you just put a sweater in a box and you ship it? I can't think of a logistically more complex business. We're sourcing ingredients from all over the world. Those ingredients then go into making a meal, and then that meal has to be delivered to your doorstep. It has to be delicious, it has to give you results, it has to look beautiful. It's really high stakes and when people open their box they have high expectations and so the team has to really be on this mission with us because there are definitely easier jobs. It's been really meaningful to watch people give it all they've got.
I'd say in terms of the business, when you're providing a product that changes people's lives, this is where I'm really grateful we don't have a sweater company. I can't say a sweater's ever changed my life. I've definitely really loved a few, but this is a product where people are like, I was going through chemo and this was like how I treated myself and reminded myself that I can heal again all the way to this was just how I decided to take care of myself and remind myself that I'm worthy. The emails and notes that we get from clients are just so moving.
So I'd say I'm most proud of continuing. After fifteen years, our core product and our core values have not changed. I think that's something people really notice that they can rely on when they do want to feel that change, even still today.
Lauren Stenger: People's relationship with food can be so complex, and it's so tied to self-worth and how you view yourself. So I'm sure it's really impactful to work in a space where it’s something you've struggled with growing up and being able to help other people improve their relationship with food and see it in a more holistic way. So I'm sure that's really meaningful.
Danielle DuBoise: Yeah. Definitely. It is. It's what's kept us going in the moments where we're like, ugh, we can't do this anymore.
Lauren Stenger: I'm curious about some wellness non-negotiables for you or habits or routines that you feel like are essential for a person who's trying to improve themselves. I know Sakara has its nine pillars, so maybe that's what you would say. But what are some routines or non-negotiables that are essential for you.
What are some routines or wellness non-negotiables that are essential for you?
Danielle DuBoise: I would say I focus less on perfection and way more on what I'm doing most of the time. I'm the first to grab a glass of wine or share french fries with girlfriends. I say that because I was one of those people who was a really good dieter. If you gave me rules, I was really good at following them, but then I would just also then fall off a cliff at some point because it was never a lifestyle. One of the biggest changes that I personally experienced was okay, I enjoy eating this way and the more I eat this way, the better I feel and so it's very motivating. But nothing is undone. I have a great time and eat whatever I might not normally eat.
There’s a joy factor, joy is a nutrient also. You're not gonna read it on the back of a label, but when we go out and we play and we have fun, that is nutrition as well, in my opinion. This need for perfection and this need for following rules and feeling like you're doing it right is really the antithesis of leading a well life. That it's more about just knowing what do you need to do most of the time to feel good. And maybe there's some periods of my life where I choose to be really strict because I'm looking for a specific outcome, and then there's times in my life where I swing the other way. Most of the time I'm somewhere in the middle and that really works for me.
Lauren Stenger: When you're not working on Sakara, how do you like to spend your time?
When you're not working on Sakara, how do you like to spend your time?
Danielle DuBoise: Gosh, look at this. Let me show you. So me and my daughter are really into beading right now. We just made these hair clips, and then there's this long beaded string after it. She really wants to start her own Etsy store, so I'm helping her make some inventory.
Lauren Stenger: My gosh. I love that. That's so fun.
Danielle DuBoise: One of the things I learned early at Sakara was that we all have this ability to create and how that manifests is different for each of us. I've watched so many of our team members use that creative energy in their work and in their day-to-day job.
For me, I’ve used that creative energy to create Sakara. Now, as that creative force isn't necessarily birthing Sakara, I've noticed I really have to do something creative every day, even if it's as simple as like beads on a string. Because I think that if you don't move that energy, it becomes quite caustic. A lot of my personal anxiety when I do have it is from not moving that energy.
So instead of judging what I'm doing with that creative force, like why am I spending my time making a beaded necklace? As long as I'm moving it, more always comes. Maybe I don't know what I want to birth into the world next, or maybe it's just not time right now, but as long as I have that modality of how to move that energy, I think that energy stays flowing and free.
Lauren Stenger: Yeah, I agree. That's something I try to foster too in my own self. I love needlepointing or doing a puzzle. Just something where I can be with my thoughts and kind of figure out what's next and just be with my own self. So I love that.
Danielle DuBoise: And not worry about being efficient and just being idle and having fun.
Lauren Stenger: Yeah, not worrying about the output and just giving yourself time to just be present.
Danielle DuBoise: Exactly.
Lauren Stenger: My last question for you is what advice would you give young entrepreneurs who are in their early stages of building their business?
What advice would you give young entrepreneurs who are in their early stages of building their business?
Danielle DuBoise: I would say launch before you're ready, hire before you're ready. Ask for help. Do as much as you can yourself, only so you have the skill, not so that you can do it into perpetuity. Early on Whitney and I, we made all the meals, we delivered them, we were the admin, we were the accountants, we were the legal team, which I wouldn't necessarily recommend.
What it allowed was that by the time we went to go hire a kitchen team, we knew how to do it. We knew how to train them, we knew what questions to ask in the interview. The other one that I think about a lot is that Whitney and I started with one client. I think there's a lot of fear for entrepreneurs these days to start small and slow.
I see a lot of entrepreneurs making the perfect website, the perfect brand, the perfect pitch deck, going out to raise from the perfect investors and then like it just becomes this really long process when I think you could launch much earlier, see how you do, start small, let it be one client, let it be ten clients, and learn and iterate and kind of let it unfold as you're building versus keeping it all tight and then one day showing it to the world, because I think you lose a lot of time and momentum that way.
Lauren Stenger: Yeah, just kind of letting it unfold naturally instead of releasing it all at once.
Danielle DuBoise: Yeah, exactly.
Lauren Stenger: Well, thank you so much for your time today. It was great chatting with you, and I really appreciated it.
Danielle DuBoise: Pleasure, so nice to chat, Lauren.
This transcript has been edited for written clarity.
