The Truth About Hair Thinning | Nutrafol’s Giorgos Tsetis

What if the one thing that quietly chips away at your confidence in the mirror, in the shower, in your day to day life, could also become the spark that changes everything? Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I AM your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. By trade and training, a high performance psychologist. Now, the idea behind these conversations is simple. To sit with the extraordinaries and to learn to really learn about how they work from the inside out. This is not about hacks or quick fixes. It's about understanding what they are searching for, how they organize their inner world, and the psychological skills that they use to navigate a life of high performance. Today's conversation is with Georgios Setis, a former model engineer, co founder and chairman of Nutrafol who in his 20s began to lose his hair. What started as a personal mission to solve his own problem grew into a science backed approach that would help millions of people. In this conversation we talk about the identity shaking experience of hair loss, the connection between stress, health and confidence, and what it takes to build something meaningful out of life's challenges. With that, let's jump into this week's conversation with my friend, Georgios. Georgios, this is like, I want to say it's a treat, but it's more than that. Like I'm so happy to be able to sit with you to have a conversation about a life arc that you've experienced and co created that I think all of us would hope to create in our own lives. So what do I mean by that? This life arc where you're able to have the self discovery process, to feel some sort of pain, to identify it and then say, how do I solve it? And then try to solve it for others and then along the way building a beautiful business. So this idea, from pain to changing other people's lives and figuring out the structure for it, I think it's brilliant and I'm so stoked to sit with you to talk about it.

Thank you so much. It's an absolute honor.

Yeah, very cool. All right, so let's start at the beginning. How do you capture your origin story? What's important for us to know, to really know you?

The business never started because we wanted to just build a business or make money was all started because we as a group of people, we're suffering from a very personal concern that we wanted to solve. And you just brought it up as well. I think it's important to do the things that you do in life for the right reasons and because it was such a problem. Hair loss, not just for myself, but also for my business partner. We were just so incredibly dedicated and motivated to drive change. Yes, we contributed to the world and we helped millions of people, but it started with ourselves. And the fact that it became what it became is just an absolute blessing.

Okay, so let's go back a couple steps. There you're running around New York City as a handsome model in your 20s. Is this the 20s?

Yeah, it was 20s.

Okay. And so you're living the life and then you are like, wait, I'm shedding. My hair is in the sink or it's in the shower or whatever. Like. So is that kind of how it started? Like, what's going on here? I'm losing my hair.

So I started to lose my hair in my early 20s, and that was back in Holland. And I never forget, I went to a dermatologist and he did a hair pull test. And he said, by the time you're 30, you're going to have a bald spot on the back of your hair. And I said, that's not acceptable. Is there anything we can do about it? And he said, well, you've got this pill which was finasteride. Take it and you will prevent it. And so very early on in my life, I started to be very proactive about losing my hair. The problem was that I started to experience a lot of side effects around those pharmaceutical drugs. And that's what later, what motivated me in New York City to say, you know what, stop. I can't compromise my health in order to keep my hair. I need to figure out something that is healthier.

Finastercide is a tricky one as a medication because the side effects, there's some side effects that are pretty predictable and. But it doesn't happen for everybody. I think you're comfortable talking about the side effect that you want.

Yeah, it definitely doesn't happen for everyone, but it's a known side effect is not just decrease in libido, but sexual dysfunction as well. So as a young man, that was obviously problematic. There was a new study that was published. I believe it was the University of Washington, where they proved out that the side effects can be prolonged. So. So sexual dysfunction post discontinuation of the actual drug. And that what's made me absolute panic because now, because every single time I stop using finasteride, I started to lose my hair. So that was my experience. It doesn't mean that everyone was experiencing that, but for me it was an issue. So I needed to take control somehow of that situation because I just simply didn't want to jeopardize my health.

So now you've got anxiety built on the top of it.

Stress on top of stress on top of stress.

That's right.

Sleepless nights.

And no exaggeration, all of that. Right. Sleepless nights, anxiety, loss of confidence. Loss of confidence, yeah. And what's remarkable here in this year, in your story arc, is that you weren't really losing your hair at a way that is like, whoa, this is changing the way I look. But you knew that it could happen, it would happen. It was on the path for it. So you're doing all the right kind of preventative steps, but there was this anxiety sitting underneath of it, and there was a side effect that was taking place.

Yeah, absolutely. So it was a very proactive approach, but the evidence was there because my father started to lose his hair in his early 20s. Completely bald. My mother's hair was. Was. Was thinning. And then I was losing one day. I was counting my hairs. It was like 400 to 500 hairs a day.

That's too much in the shower or in a comb.

In the shower. No, Just even studying engineering and trying to. Just raining hair. It was absolutely raining hair. And it was also stress. Stress related. But it's incredibly interesting because stress can trigger your genetic predisposition. Right. So. And nobody was talking about stress. So I knew that I was genetically predisposed. I knew that was insanely stressed. So I decided to take a very proactive and preventative approach to it.

Yeah. And that was the finaster side.

Finasteride, yes.

And then you said, okay, I'm not doing that because of the side effects. I got to. I want to find another solution. And there wasn't one on the market that you felt comfortable with or, like, how did that start?

Yeah, so I took finasteride for about nine years. So every single day, I was taking this pill that was essentially blocking testosterone within my body, dehydrate testosterone. And that led to these side effects. And in New York City, I simply wanted to have a solution that was not just effective, but also very healthy for you. And all the basic vitamins and minerals that were out there were simply not effective enough because they also just address dietary deficiencies. Now, we all know that hair loss for men and for women is not caused by just dietary deficiencies. It's hormonal related, it's inflammation related, it's stress related, et cetera. So together with my science biohacker friend Roland, we Very quickly identified that the problem was multifactorial. So to address the problem through different angles. So that gave us hope because he, as a matter of fact, which is a funny story, he addressed his rheumatoid arthritis very effectively with some very potent botanicals, nutraceuticals, targeting inflammation. And as a consequence of that, his hair started to grow back. He lost his hair early days as well. So that what led us to believe, okay, well, there's multiple factors. Nobody's talking about stress, nobody's talking about inflammation. When it comes to hair loss. There must be a better way to address this in a healthier matter.

And you went after this like a supplement you went after.

That's right. Because we've been told that just putting things on your hair is going to solve the issue, which again is, is, is not true. The problem is internal. I always believed a, in a whole body wellness approach, your hair is essentially a reflection of your inner wellness or inner well being. And if you want to make a change or a difference, you need to address it internally. That was always the original hypothesis. Yes, you can support it topically, but you need to address it internally. And that's why our, from the beginning, our focus was, well, if it's not drugs, then it need, it need to be supplements. But then how do you make supplements effective enough, right? And how do you approach that? The best way possible.

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It's a part of someone's identity and that's big. And I continue to see that every day. Yesterday I was sitting in a restaurant and somebody came to me, says, I don't want to disturb, but I just want to quickly share with you that you changed my life. And I was like, oh my God, I got goosebumps. He said, I was losing my hair. As a matter of fact, I had some psoriasis on my face as well and I fully, fully lost my confidence. As a matter of fact, I felt Incredibly lonely for a very long period amount of time. And we all know there's major consequences to that. That really what drove us in the beginning as well. Because just seeing and interacting with people and what they were going through when they lose their hair and men can lose their hair and that's okay, right? It's a bit more known and accepted. But 10 years ago, when we started the company, women's hair loss was a big deal. There's still some taboo around that. So when women go through hair loss, the impact on their identity is astronomical. I met so many women who would, can give you another example, who would wait for the elevator to be empty because if they would be in an elevator full of people, typically the light shines on your hair and it shows the concern, right? What I've witnessed is for many it became life limiting. And that's big, right? Life limiting. So not being able to live your life to your fullest potential is concerning. And that's what we have witnessed across the board. And that's why I got so incredibly passionate and excited about driving change. Because hair sometimes could feel a little superficial, but it's still deeply, deeply personal to people.

So there's the nutrition component, there's a genetic component, and there's a psychological component. All three of those combined. If they're not favorable or if they are favorable, there's a behavioral component. When you were designing the product that you wanted to take for yourself, what did you want to make sure was in it? And then also like, what are some things that you found now that are not in it? That if you could go back or what, you know, that's because there's always this emerging kind of forward pushing insights around nutraceuticals and supplements. So what did you want to make sure was in it? And then what are you curious about? What could be a benefit moving forward?

Number one was efficacy. The product just has to work, otherwise you're just building a marketing company, right? And I didn't want to be in that business. I gave up my engineering business to dedicate my 10 years to hair. So I wanted to make sure that it's legit and I'm going to be able to make a difference in people's lives. That was the absolute priority. Now how to go about that was this multifactorial approach. So we selected nutraceuticals that were able to target inflammation, to address stress, to address the dietary deficiencies, to hopefully rebalance with adaptogens some of those hormones that may be a little off because of Internal and external factors again, that became the hypothesis. And later we really proved it out through some, some pretty state of the art clinical trials because essentially we did pharmaceutical great clinical trials to supplementation, which was also not necessarily something that was needed. I remember investors telling me it's like, well, that's too big of a risk. It's like you spending a million dollars on a clinical trial so you don't have to do that. You can get away with making claims based on single ingredients. It's like, well, my question was always, it's like, well, how do you deal with that? If you put all these ingredients together, you want to make sure that there's no counterindications or it actually continues to work. Hopefully there's synergy. So from the beginning we just really wanted to make sure we're doing what was right and proving it out. And that's probably what we the most proud of. It's that research, that original hypothesis that's now published and worldwide recognized and now applied to not just hair, but different fields as well. A beauty of nutraceuticals and these natural compounds is that you can multi target an issue pretty effectively. So that just along the journey it kept us going because that, that efficacy was incredibly, incredibly important also for us to change the conversation, to go back to, to that emotional component. It's like, how do you, how do you resonate with millions of people? How do you change people's lives? Credibility is essential. And that's why we went to. From the beginning, we interacted with physicians to educate physicians, dermatologists, plastic surgeons, people who typically go to doctors for hair loss. We spent so much time with them to proudly show this new approach, which then allowed us to build this network and that level of credibility to be able to change that conversation. So we became the number one dermatologist recommended brand. And that was because we just very proudly were able to present that science.

There you go. So that was the stepwise benefits. I'm more interested in the psychology that set up the decisions that you make that led to the outcome. So the psychology is I really want to help people, but I'm not going to just kind of spray some stuff, put it in a pill, pop it in and say, look, these three things are known to decrease inflammation and that's the solution for whatever. So you spent a bunch of money and took a risk to see if what you're actually building was working.

That's right.

And the point here is that you really wanted to know if it was working because of what reason Ethical reasons keep going. Moral reasons, because you didn't want to promise something that was not going to help somebody.

Never.

Okay, so then that leads to one of the maybe biggest openings, is that now you're in the science community. You go to the applied scientists, MDs and physicians or whatever, and you show them what you found and then it opens up.

Originally it was just an hypothesis. So we're presenting a white paper, hundreds of pages, which was not necessarily proven, but it made a ton of sense. But we were so incredibly passionate about this new approach because nobody was talking about the problem in a multifactorial matter, that we were able to at least engage physicians, which was very interesting because there was an appetite to dressing it differently and even with a lot of skeptical physicians, because it's. It's obviously needed for physicians to be very critical and skeptical. The way we handled that was we would just give product away to them. Say, you know what, let's just try it. We put our money where our mouth was and it's like, you don't have to buy any products from us. Try it on your patients that you believe may need some help. It was actually that simple. Going back to your point, it was always approached from a very authentic way. Still today, the number one message is we're not selling product. And of course we're selling product because we need to sustain ourselves and support our people across the board. But the message was always like, let's do everything, everything in our power to set people up for success and help them and support them through this emotional journey that they're going through. So imagine a world where the product would not perform first of all, we would not have the business at the size that it currently is. But that would never, ever feel good.

Are you able to talk about the valuation of the company?

Yeah.

So you went from a startup, bootstrap startup, early seed funding.

Basically put all the money we had into research and we just built. Barely made it to have physical product in hand. Me and my business partner.

It was just all in based on your savings account. All of it. Okay.

Just all of it. It's like, this is it or nothing.

How many years later?

Go back to Europe if it doesn't work.

Okay. How many years later did you get your last valuation?

The company got acquired by Unilever in 2022. That was well over a billion dollars. I exited the company in the beginning of 2025 and that was a multi billion dollar valuation, which was an amazing success. Not just of course for ourselves, but also for our people. Internally, our partners, just across the board. And the reason why I feel comfortable mentioning those numbers because it represents impact. It represents the amount of people which are millions and millions of people who we're able to support throughout their journey. That we just feel very, very good about.

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It's a reflection of your inner health, which is exciting because you can typically take care of your health. You can take steps to live healthier. Better sleep, better nutrition, more movement, more exercise, which is quite empowering because if you live healthier, you can also control the outcome of your hair, which I think is exciting. That's not always true. When the genetic component is very present, which is essentially your sensitivity to specific hormones, that may not be the case, but by being very proactive about your health, you can absolutely control not just your hair, but just, you know, how you look. Right. So I think that's exciting, which then also further reinforces the importance of just thinking in a preventative matter, not just for hair, but for everything in life.

Okay. So that actually can do an interesting thing that can create more anxiety. And I'll tell you, there's two sides to this coin. So you're coming from hope and excitement. Like, look, what I found is if you eat some certain things, you take some supplements of things that you're not getting, you reduce inflammation in your lifestyle and you meditate, you do the right amount of exercise, you're kind of getting a whole full human experience to optimize. From a nutrition, movement and psychology standpoint, you're going to give yourself the best chance you can to be vibrant, full stop, hair included. We haven't talked about sleep yet and its relationship to overall health. What have you come to find about sleep and hair health?

Not sleeping right is certainly increasing inflammation and increasing stress. We know that that's affecting indirectly hair. So cortisol going through the roof or even just being chronically stressed because of lack of sleep is certainly affecting hair.

What do you do to compete to sleep at an optimal level?

Competing is a great word. I don't know if I'm competing.

I feel like I'm competing. I'm competing with all of the things that I want to read and watch and have conversations with. I'm competing against that and that stimulation in life to say, no, no, hold on, I got to get these you know, for me, it's like seven and a half hours is my sweet spot. And so if I don't get the seven and a half, damn next day, it's just harder. It's just hard. And I can do it for like three, four days, you know, six and a half. Six for three, four days. But after that, it's just like. It's a diminishing return that is demonstratively noticeable to me. So I feel like I'm competing. Maybe I've got the wrong framing because I'm working my ass off.

I love that you're competing, and in a way, we all compete. But I'm gonna be honest, I really look forward to sleep. I really do. If I can sleep nine to 10 hours.

Nine to 10?

Well, it's hard to sleep nine to 10 hours. It requires a lot of magnesium and everything. Very dark. But I would do everything to sleep more hours.

Yeah.

So I'm trying to stretch my sleep to its maximum because I just know that it's not just about performance for me personally, but it's also just simply about mood. Like, how do you feel about yourself throughout the day? Do you feel sharp? Do you feel. Do you feel like you can make a difference? Do you feel like you're. You're a great parent or a great husband? To me, that's such a big part of life. I do everything in my power to feel the best I can. And for me, the more sleep, the better.

What are you doing with that research that I just noticed? I haven't read it, but I just saw a pop a couple of weeks ago, around in the next handful of years that they're going to solve hair loss. This is not from a nutraceutical standpoint. Did you see that?

Yeah, there's always. Yeah, there's always. Yeah, there's always research and a lot of new great findings that can hopefully lead to that.

Have you dug into any of it or.

Yeah, yeah, I'm aware of some. Some technologies, and frankly, I'm. I'm hopeful it's going to happen at some point now, especially with the introduction of AI, I'm not against any of that. It's like, as long as it helps people, I hope that those technologies are not going to come with tremendous side effects. We've seen it with even as mpic. It does wonders, right. For many. But at the same time, there's a lot of things that we don't know.

Is there connection with Ozempic and hair.

Loss or hair growth or hair loss?

Absolutely.

Yeah. We've seen it, we've seen it across the board because of the decrease in muscle mass and how it affects your metabolic systems. The nutrient deficiencies when people not eating the right nutrients or not absorb the right nutrients. That absolutely leads to hair thinning and hair loss, which is concerning, certainly.

So I want to get your gaze on what's coming next. But there's one more thought I have here which is like, what are you making sure that you get in your diet to optimize your health and then hair being a natural consequence of that health.

I'm not an expert when it comes to diet, but for myself I'm trying to eat with variety. I don't necessarily believe in just very strict diets. No meat or no fish or vegetarian. Just variety to me is important. For me it's more about where do you get your food from? And it's, it's incredibly unfortunate that it's very hard to find foods that are not contaminated with toxins, whether it's fish, the heavy metals or. Or pesticides on your salads. So I'm very worried about that. So it's less about the types of foods it's. Try to eat with some variety. But then I'm doing everything in my power to clean my vegetables with baking soda and vinegar the old school way.

You are?

Yeah, of course, the old school way.

So wait, you'll soak, you'll have your. Absolutely, yeah.

Got some help. But you know, I'm not.

It could be good for you. Yeah, so I've seen some of that.

That's a full time job. Yeah, just soaking vegetables and making sure that your salads are actually clean.

So take strawberries, for example. You're soaking them in vinegar and baking.

Soda vinegar for how long? At least 15 minutes.

And then you wash them and put them back in the fridge. Or you.

Yeah, eventually freeze them.

Yeah, or freeze them.

Yeah. Okay. And then, and then you consume them afterwards.

Okay, that's a good one.

I started to get very much into this because, because of the, the kids and the young children that, that I have. Because we have immune systems that can handle those suctions. But especially for children. Children, it could be, could be concerning.

So you had a family member that had a significant health scare. And you and I have known each other for a long time. The listener wouldn't know that. And you came back and you were on it with turmeric. And you gave me some really good turmeric. This sounds like a weird two nerds talking about high quality turmeric. Are you still Bullish. On the benefits of turmeric.

I think it's. First of all, it's one of the most studied botanicals on the planet, properly studied, but it addresses crp, the inflammatory biomarker. And I'm a true believer, certainly, because I think at the root of a lot of diseases is inflammation. So if you can rebalance and target that on an ongoing basis, I think that's incredibly beneficial.

So I just. I think the listener will be interested. Is that almost every night. Not every night. Kind of like your gratitude practice is that I'm chopping turmeric at night.

No way.

And, yeah, like just stuffed organic turmeric that'll just buy from wherever I chop it up, throw it into some boiling water, and then I've got a great tea and then I eat the turmeric after it's been like. Yeah. And so it's one way that I get turmeric in. I also supplement with it.

Right?

Yeah.

Making sure it gets absorbed, I think is.

So you need a little black pepper in the tea.

Absolutely. With a little black pepper and. Yeah, for. For optimum absorption.

Yeah. Key. All right, let's move on. Like, you've got this ability to see around corners and see down the. Down the path, and you're in a unique perspective is that you built something that's significant. You're in the vibe of the whole thing. You're transitioning away from an operator of the business. What are you interested in when it comes to health over the next. Call it three to five years as a horizon?

Health is one of my core values. So I would love to further double down on that. And of course, we're talking about physical health, but also mental health. Why is mental health on a decline? And obviously there's a lot of factors that play a role there. So I would love to focus on ways to elevate humans and drive impact that way through health. Because ultimately, I believe that it's all about how people feel about themselves on a daily basis. We've seen that with Nutrafol as well. It's like helping them even a little bit with their hair, and it's making them feel better and a little bit more confident and they're becoming better humans. It's incredible. The moment someone feels optimal and confident, they're able to also drive impact in the world and help others to do the same. So this ripple effect is. Is magic to me. I want to focus there. And especially now with the introduction of AI, I think that's an exciting future. I know not everyone thinks about the future in an exciting way when you think about AI. But I think from a health perspective, we're going to make some tremendous progress to reduce suffering across the globe.

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Yeah. The workspace is so fundamental to how people feel about themselves and came organically to me. I like to be kind. I hope that the future of leadership is kindness. I think if everyone would be a little kinder in the world, it's like, that's a better place. Right. And I think it starts by that because. And we created a culture around kindness and caring for one another. Because if you. If you don't. If you don't care for each other within an organization, it's incredibly hard to then express that care, that kindness externally. So I always intuitively knew that we have to become very intentional about treating our people, people extremely well. And that created a lot of joy, and it created community, which is also Such a big part of longevity and just feeling good about yourself. So kindness is a big one for us. And the second one is psychological safety, which allowing people to truly speak up and challenge us and challenge the leaders. Super important when it comes to innovation, in my opinion. So in parallel, what we did, it was also trying to just break down hierarchies as much as possible and stay away from bureaucracy as much as possible. And I know that's hard because hierarchies are there in order for things to, I guess, function. And I give you some examples. Like, you know, I never wanted to call myself a boss. Right. I was always with the people versus just people working for me. It was always paid attention to details and still do. Right. It's I work with people and people not work for me. We're all in this together. Right. And that's how we pursue our mission. That's how we're going to drive this company forward, and this is how we're going to impact people's lives. So we build a culture around that. And that's frankly one of the most beautiful things. I often say that there's nothing better in life to do great things with great people. Right. And companies do that. Right. It's a great way to connect and pursue a mission there. So that's something probably that we are. I'm still incredibly proud of. And I feel very grateful that all the people, including the new CEO, Cindy, who's amazing, carries on with that, with that mindset.

Would you say that's your signature as a leader, is kindness?

I would say so. The reason why I hesitate is we all have our moments. Right? But you want to. You want to care for people. I think it's very important to care for people.

How do you repair when you lose your mind about something? Six hours of sleep, you know, whatever. There's no excuses for being a jerk to other people. But like, let's say you have a moment and it's public. How do you go about working through that?

If it's public and public meaning more.

Than one person, three people.

Exactly. If it's public and you feel like you cross the line, apologize big time, own it. And I've done that. Like, I've done that quite often where it's like, you know what? I'm sorry, you know, I shouldn't have responded that way. Owning up to it and learning from that experience. I always try to get better and to learn from my mistakes. Nobody's, of course, perfect. Yeah. Apologizing and then being there with everyone. I think is incredibly important.

Is there a mistake that comes to mind that is a good learning tool for me as a leader and the listener about how a successful business operator, you know, has learned from a mistake.

One mistake is partnering with the wrong people that don't have the right or similar intentions. Right now I'm interested. I partner up with people who, who I know they're going to be there for me, for the organization when things don't go well. Everyone wants to be your friend and wants to be around you when things go incredibly well. I'm way more interested in, okay, who are the people who are going to stick by you during difficult times?

How do you suss that out? Do you hire slow? Do you hire fast?

It's a great question. I don't look at resumes anymore. I do that quite intentionally. I want to know who, who that person is. I'm less interested in what they've done in life. I want to dig deep to understand what they're up to, what they care about, what their values are. So I really try to spend a lot of time around that to ideally in person. Because even now in the virtual world, it's like you're missing so many clues since all that nonverbal communication is being stripped. So I'm really trying to understand who you're dealing with and what their intentions are to make sure that any commitment or any partnership is set up for success. That's really trying. That's really something I'm trying to exercise and try to get better at as we move forward.

What do you hope people would know about how to live a great life that you've come to learn by, you know, the way that you've designed and co designed your life.

What I realize now is that after having had so much success with the company, what I don't want to do is waste precious time with the people that I love the most. Building companies and trying to make a difference and trying to elevate yourself. It also comes with sacrifice. Right. And as long as you're aware of that sacrifice, I think then it's okay. But there is certainly sacrifice that takes place and I admire people who don't try to do that and spend a lot of family time and spend a lot of time with their loved ones, with their children. There's so much joy that people can find throughout those experiences. Yeah, Living a great life for everyone means something very different. For me, it was pursuing a mission, solving problems for myself, and hopefully being able to help many more people to do the same. That's what drives me, but at the same time, really making sure that I'm a good father, I'm a great friend to people and just a good human by just constantly challenging myself and trying to be better. And everything in life is incredibly important.

Okay, two hinge ideas. The tension between your teammates across the organization. You wanting them to live a great life, being with their loved ones, family, and also wanting them to meet the objectives that they've said that they're going to meet as a good teammate to kind of move the mission forward. So it's the objectives that they are responsible for, mapped up against the personal lives that they also want to have. So how do you manage the tension between that and then there's this secondary, which is the tension between you have established a great product, but you're built on innovation. Nutrafol was built on innovation and evidence. So I want to get the hinge between the tension between meeting the demands of the job and spending time with loved ones outside of the workforce and resting on the laurels of the product that you've built, that's well established and innovation. So can you hit both of those?

Yes. It starts by making sure that at least people feel good at work. Because if that is toxic in whatever way that impacts everything, you're spending a tremendous amount of time at work. So really investing in activities, in ways to support each other during hard times, during good times, celebrating things together is essential. And then, of course, as we are a wellness company, if you feel that people are stretched too thin, or when you feel that there's too much anxiety and too much pressure because of deadlines, because of innovation, because we need to focus on what's next and what's big or a large launch or whatever that may be, allowing people and empowering people to voice that, to voice that so they can step back and do whatever is right for them. So we introduced many tools around that to make sure that people can do what's right for them. There's always going to be tension between performance at work and time spent with family. But if people pursue purpose or mission within an organization, it becomes exciting, it becomes a part of life. That's what I'm worried about. AI When a lot of people start to lose their jobs, they're not just going to, not necessarily lose their income, right? But they're going to lose purpose. So for me, my work is purpose. I'm sure for you it is as well. That's something that I'm trying to think about quite a bit. But overall, truly making sure that people are happy within the organization so they can be the best version of themselves outside of the organization while making sure that they remain very healthy from a stress perspective and allowing them to take time off. We had people, sometimes we had mechanisms in place where we forced people to take off because yeah, we felt like that was always right to do.

Yeah, very cool. And then the tension between the product that works and innovation like making net new products.

Yeah, that's quite challenging as well. Because when you invest millions of dollars in clinical trials and you're proving that a specific formulation is, is working, what that does it also typically you see it in a lot of organizations. It demotivates.

Yeah, right.

It demotivates to introduce something new. Because introducing something new also comes with risk. It also comes with potential confusion. One of our mantras within our organization was always keep, keep growing. Now obviously that's pretty broad and a lot of people that means something, of course, something different. But we always try to evolve. Our risk appetite was quite, quite large there. So investing in new technologies and investing in clinical trials to make sure that we offer to our customers, to our patients the best solution possible was always the North Star. And I'm very grateful and happy that that turned out to be well. But again, we continue to innovate. Yeah, there's always ways to do better. And science evolves. Science is dynamic. So the more we know, the more we grow and the better we need to evolve.

You know what I've loved about this conversation, Georgios, is that I can feel the kindness that you are wishing for other people. I can also appreciate that what kind of kicked off the whole thing was your appreciation for a multidisciplined solution. And the way that you're answering your questions is also very clearly aligned with the multi dimensions that go into just about anything. So I can see your leadership, I can see your character, virtues and values underneath and embedded in all of your answers. And I can also see like this excitement and hope for what's next. And I'm excited to see what you go build next. I'm excited to where you go place your gaze to see what is coming next for you. So thank you for showing a model of what it means to go from a phase of suffering to find a solution, to work from that place, to help multiple millions of people to be just a little bit better in their life and then along the way embedded in a delivery system which is a business and a model of business that is an emblem for modern leadership. So thank you for the model.

Amazing. Well, thank you so much and I'm incredibly excited to know and to hear what everything that you're working on because you're changing the world in such a phenomenal way by caring for people and elevating millions. So that's incredibly exciting.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Appreciate you, George Else.

Thank you very much.

Next time on Finding Mastery, we're joined by the legendary Howie Mandel. Comedian, creator, and longtime champion for mental health.

Howie pulls back the curtain on life behind the laughs. From chasing fame to redefining success and how speaking openly about his struggles with anxiety and OCD helped spark a cultural shift.

Join us Wednesday, October 1st at 9am.

Pacific for this unforgettable conversation.

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