287: Why Bone Broth is the Secret to Getting Healthy with Dr. Kellyann Petrucci
5 Dec 2025 · 43 min
Dr. Kellyann Petrucci explains why bone broth heals the gut: it contains gelatin, glycine, and minerals that seal the intestinal lining and reduce inflammation. She covers protein and blood sugar regulation as foundations of health, compares bone broth to collagen supplements, and discusses her path from chiropractor to building a national nutrition brand.
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Hi, I'm Natalie Jill, and I help women in their 40s, 50s, and beyond redefine, rebrand, and laugh with aging. Welcome to Midlife Conversations. On this podcast, I do what I do best, taking complicated information that is relevant in this point of our lives now and break it down simply with actionable steps you can implement to level up your life. I also regularly interview some of the most inspiring people living their best midlife years. Now on this show, I cover topics about our shifting hormones, weight struggles, our mood and focus changes, raising teenagers, our relationships, career changes, beauty, and more. If you are new here, I encourage you go back and listen from episode one, when this podcast was previously called Listen up for the full transformative experience.
So excited to chat with Kelly Ann Petrucci. I've been drinking her bone broth, following her stuff, reading her books for years, and I've gotten to know her recently on a more personal level, and I thought, I have so many questions for her about how she got into what she does, how she ended up niching down, even on bone broth. Like, where does that come from when people didn't even know what that was when she started niching down on it? And how does she build her business? So many questions. And what's it like navigating midlife? So thank you so much for being here today.
Oh, my gosh. Well, I feel like I want to, like, flip exactly what you said from me to you because I've been following you for years and I love it. And I can't tell you when I was in private practice how many people I said, just watch Natalie Jill. You want to watch Natalie Jill? So, you know, we have that definitely in common and mutual love.
Oh, I love that. I love that. Okay, so take us back. Because you were originally a chiropractor. How does one go from a chiropractor to a naturopathic doctor to this bestselling author and advocate on these things? Tell us what happened here.
Well, I found out that when I was in practice, and I have to say the education that I received was phenomenal because I had human anatomy for two years. So I actually understand really well where the organs are and how they're innervated and how they work. I had geriatrics, pediatrics, spinal anatomy for two years, an intricate look at the immune system and how it looked. So the education was very valuable. But what I found out was what really lit me up was the biochemistry behind all of it. It wasn't structure and function. It was what was going on inside the body. And when I got out into practice, I didn't have all my board exams done. I had three of the four. And I was certified though, to do nutrition. So I thought, okay, well, let me start out working in these offices. I'm going to do nutrition. And I found out I was really, really good at it. I found out that, you know, it's just, it's like, it's the best feeling in the world when you find you feel like you're flypaper to something, that you know, you're so attracted to something, and then you find out that you're really good at it. It's like it's the best moment. And that's what happened. And over time, I had such a waiting list of patients to see me for nutrition. And I started studying more and more about nutrition. And I. It was my love and it just became my life's work and my passion. And then naturopathy came into BE because I wanted deeper, a deeper study of naturopathic medicine. And that's. It just kind of took a life of its own. I kind of found me.
Yeah. So when you started niching down into that and you said it started to find you, were there some commonality things that you learned that that really changed things for you or things that you still apply today? Like, I'm curious what some of those breakthroughs were that you figured out about nutrition.
So I started out again when I was in my 20s. I did a lot of bodybuilding. I did bodybuilding show, I did fitness competitions, all of that. And it is interesting because so many of those things we found over time that a lot of it is toxic, it can be toxic to your body. But I also found there are kind of gold standards that still apply that I learned then that I would help patients with, in practice, in nutrition, with eating, with food mindset, all of that. That really does, it did carry over into the years that I still use and still practice today. You know, one of them is just understanding the importance of protein, what protein do and understanding. And this is what a lot of people don't talk about carbohydrates and really getting them and understanding that it's not calories in, calories out. A lot of it has to do with quality and understanding, okay, these type of carbohydrates are fiber. They're the green stuff. We know what they are. They help move things through the intestine because we want to be cleansed and not clogged. We don't want to be bloated, we don't Want to feel that extra weight? What is one of the ways in which we can achieve that? It's always through fiber. And then what's the other stuff? The other stuff gives us energy and you have to make that delineation. So it's the carbohydrates, the energy, carbohydrates, like potatoes, which was a big one for bodybuilders. Like you do things like sweet potatoes, you would do things like black rice, you would do things like quinoa, you would do things like the squashes and all of that. And now it's so easy because they already come spiraled and all that stuff. So it's understanding where you get your energy. Because when people like to change their diet, they bunk, they bump and they think it's wrong for them. They think they can't do it. It's not that it's wrong for you, it's not that you can't do it, you're just bunking. Yeah.
And you know what's interesting, because I came from that space to the fitness, like bodybuilding world where we learned a lot about protein and carbs. And it's. I watched the trends over the years. Like, I know you also witnessed the whole fat free era. Like we eliminate all fat, all fat's bad. And now it's gone like this whole other direction where protein's okay, fat is good, but carbs are villainized. And are you seeing that too? This whole, this whole pivot towards these women villainizing carbs and fiber versus and they're adding all this protein and fat and they're missing the boat on a lot here because now we're eating too much fat and we're not having enough fiber.
And that's a big problem, particularly for women. And I think if people truly understood that, particularly for women that 40 and over, it's magic. But fiber is magic because what it does is it slows down the rate of insulin in your body. How it attacks things you want insulin to be. I would say it's like drinking matcha versus coffee matcha. You get kind of like a slow buildup buzz. It's the same thing with how insulin responds when you have fiber. It's a slow release, it's not a hard and heavy hit. And I think even the more perplexing and interesting thing about fiber that I've recently found is that when you're eating fiber, you release hormones very differently. So a lot of people say as you get older, you've got this estrogen dominance that naturally occurs as progesterone starts to dip. So one of the ways that you can release this and stabilize your hormones, which is incredibly valuable, you're doing it naturally. Eat fiber, because the fiber combines with your gut microbes, your microbiome, those little guys swimming around because we're bags of bugs. It combines with those enzymes in your gut and it helps release those estrogens so they don't build up in your body. And the buildup of those estrogens are what causes a lot of what we ail from like endometriosis, pcos and all of all the things that are bothersome as we get older, we start to mature. So there's so much value to fiber that that needs to be. To have its moments. Like chia seeds are having its moments. Like, yeah, fiber needs its moment.
Yeah. And it does worry me all the trend towards keto and carnivore, really eliminating a lot of this fiber.
Well, I think it's like talking about Paleo. I wrote one of the first books on Paleo and one of the things that people had an assumption towards was that I'm only talking about a hunk of meat. That's such a small part of what Paleo is. But that's, that's where the focus was. We're going to focus on keto or you're going to focus on some of these other trends. You need to focus on the health benefits and how some people need to deviate from the strict and fast rules. There's deviations. And you have to understand that our lifestyles and how we're living and the stress and everything else we're going through, they show up between 40 and 50. So however you've lived your life and walked your path, it ends up knocking at your door at 40 and 50. So depending on your path, what you've been through, the way your body processes everything from food to hormones, there are derivations with each person. So you have to look at these diets, mine included, as a template. They are templates. And any diet that you're doing, particularly since we're using the word diet, it should set out to do three things and only three things that is, should help get the inflammation down in your body. You want to see reactive protein. You want to see where that inflammation, that heat in your body is. It is the, it is the common underpinning between everything that we have that we don't want to happen in our body. It's inflammation. Second, have to regulate our blood sugar. Any diet you do that should do that. And third, it has to heal the gut. When you have that trifecta, that is the most important trifecta. I'm telling you. If I took every patient that I've seen over doing this, almost 30 years, guys.
Yeah.
Patient that I've ever seen, you put them in a football field and you say, okay, which ones were helped and why did you make a transformation? Who were the ones that you were able to transform? It was the people that were able to do those three things. Because when you do those three things, all the freedom happens. That's when freedom happens. That's when life freedom happens. Everything releases all these hardships that we feel. It's a matter of. And I really thought about this algorithm. I thought about it long and hard. What is it that I really did? What to the people that I transformed? What really, really worked is that.
Wow, okay, so speaking, this is a perfect transition into the gut health part, because I'm assuming this has something to do with the love of bone broth and the products there and why you've created this. So, you know, bone broth was sort of this new idea to general population just not. Not too long ago. And I don't think people fully understand the benefit of it now. I. You were talking about it years ago. I know I was talking about it in my aging reverse book years ago. And this is something that I have been drinking, you know, even when I was having. Making it from scratch. Not myself personally, but I have people help make it. I don't do chicken feet. I don't do chicken feet in my house. I like to pretend it grows on trees. But. But when you obviously can make it from scratch, that's a big deal. That's it. And it's so good and so nourishing and so helpful for gut health and joints and pain and all the things. So I want. I want to hear from you, like, where did you decide this idea about bone broth? And why did you end up niching down to really produce products around this?
Yeah, so I had a very interesting education. I have to say this because I was one of the few doctors in the country that was able to study with Dr. Thomas Rao of the Paracelsus Clinic, a famed clinic where they heal things on a routine basis that we don't even have the slightest idea what to do with. It was a very extraordinary two years of my life. And because I had that, and I had that very early on, I was able to understand things that we weren't talking about yet. No one was talking about gut health way back when. I learned this through the Swiss medicine. No one was talking about things like inflammatory foods. Like, I learned then. Nobody was talking about how emotions impact your viscera or your organs. They were all of these things I learned early on. And somehow, even through this interesting kind of circuitous path, I decided to spend all my time talking about bone broth. And here's why. One of the first books that I wrote was a book on Paleo. And when you write a book for Wiley Publishing, it's like, I can't even tell you. They're academic books, basically. So the research that they want in these books are like nothing you've ever seen. And I did a really deep dive into what it meant to understand Paleolithic medicine and nutrition. What was it really? And as I started doing this research and I started studying bands and tribes, okay, so these are groups of people way back or hunter gatherer ancestors that stuck together and how they lived their lives. I became really intrigued. I kept coming across in all of my readings about this broth, this broth, this broth that Florence Nightingale would bring to hospitals, to the injured, to the wounded, to the sick, to open up their healing. I said, how far back does this go? Even if you go to 1800, if you go visit historical homes of the 1800s, when you go into the kitchen, I just had the experience. I went to Newport, Rhode Island. It was unbelievable. Went into all the mansions. That was very interesting. I really got into that show, the Gilded Age. And I said, I got to see. I got to see. I got to dig into this. There was all these soup pots, huge soup pots, everywhere. It really does go back far, far, far. So I said, okay, I've got to find out what this healing broth. I didn't even know it was bone broth. I knew it as healing broth. Well, what is.
Kellyanne? It's interesting because you think about, like, just the old. You know, your grandmother tells you to drink chicken soup when you have. When you're sick. Like, we did make chicken soup from bones before. I mean, that's.
I certainly. And this is what I always say. I certainly didn't invent it. All I did was remind people, because it's been around for a long, long time. And there's a reason why anything that has stuck around this long has got to have teeth. There's got to be some kind of intrinsic benefit. That's pretty miraculous. And. And so I kept hearing about this. So I started making this broth. By the way, there was not one single broth on the market. Not a one. So I started making the broth and I started really getting into it. I came out with a bone broth diet, which became a New York Times bestseller. It's now in nine countries.
It really resonated with people. And when I first came out with it, the publishers, they were like, you can't call it bone broth. You can't call. That's not sexy. You have to call it some kind of fancy name. Now it's bone broth. That's what it is. And I'm really glad I stuck to that because it became a food category. There is a food category called bone broth. And that was really the work of a PBS special that I did in conjunction with a book that just the public was ready for. And I think the reason why the public was ready for one of the reasons, and this is an interesting part of what we're talking about today, is there's incredible healing benefits. We know that, and I can tell you all the benefits. But all these women that had all of these issues, trying to lose pounds, trying to get rid of the bloat, trying to get better skin, all of these things, feeling like they're aging, like rapid fire, feeling like they're waking up tired all the time, feeling like their joints are achy every single day, starting to feel like they want to kick everything and everyone because they don't know why their thoughts and their minds, brain is no longer regulated. All of these things that were happening with women, they could not find answers. And when I realized, when I tested three cities out and I saw that the results with bone broth were typical, I said, okay, I have not ever seen or experienced anything like this, notwithstanding the fact that I started falling apart when I was getting older. And it really changed everything. Everything for me. Completely transformed my look. And it's like this. It's like this incredible tool that you have that will never go away. That about, like, I want to get back to the way I used to be, or I want to, you know, how do you freeze time? How do you start looking good now? It's an incredible tool. I've never seen anything like it, which is why I built a brand around it, which is why I talk about it still to this day, which is why I'm doing yet another book on bone broth. A lot of things to say, Natalie.
Yeah, so let me ask you these things that are coming up, because these are. I'm thinking of what women ask me about this. They ask, they say, first of all, I get the question is There a vegan bone broth. And I say, no, there's not a vegan bone broth because bones are don't grow on trees. And I understand that there are, you know, we try to do it out of seaweed and things like that. So I want to, I'm going to ask you about that in a minute. Just how do you. I want, if you could speak into that. The second thing is collagen versus bone broth. Like some people say, well, I'll just take a collagen supplement. I'll just drink collagen.
Do you do both?
Do you recommend one over the other? Like, talk to us about that. Those are the two things that I hear all the time.
So I'll answer the second because it's the one I remember the most. The second question. Collagen versus bone broth. We all know this. We know this innately, whatever is a whole food wins. So if you're going to ask me, Kellyanne, what do you prefer your packets or making it at home, I'm going to tell you straight up, you make it at home. If you have the time, you want to do it, you have the notion, do it. Whole food always wins out. So bone broth is in a whole more of a whole food form. So you're getting more across the board when you're having bone broth. Collagen, though, is very beneficial. And so for people who.
Prefer colder things or they prefer it in shakes or they want to put things, maybe a dab in their coffee, it's a really beneficial way to get that hit of collagen. But in my opinion, for that head to toe to hit those three prongs. There's three prongs. There's three transformative, transformative prongs, which is healing the gut, reducing that all over inflammation and balancing blood sugar, I just feel like nothing does it for me. Like bone broth, collagen is amazing, but it's a secondary.
Okay, so do you do both? Do you take collagen in addition to bone broth? You just get it all from bone broth.
Right now I have a lot of bone broth. And to me, if it's in the summertime and I want to have more shakes because I'm more into Shakespeare summer, then I'll have collagen shakes. But I also have bone broth shakes. You know, I have dehydrated bone broth that we use in shakes that I really find delicious collagen. To me, when I think about collagen, I think about a lot of the glucosamine that's in there, which is amazing, great for bone health. And I think of it for skin health. And I want everyone to understand that. We talk about collagen very loosely, but there are limiting factors. And the one limiting factor you have to realize is that you must, must have vitamin C as a precursor. It's a rate limiting factor, as we call it in science. Meaning that you can't get collagen without the presence of vitamin C. Kind of.
Like vitamin D with vitamin K you got to combine so with. Okay, so. And I do the same. I drink bone broth daily and I take collagen because like insurance to me, I'll do, I'll do both. When you say bone broth powder, so dehydrated powder, I know, like with collagen powder, it's not like a true complete protein like you're trying to put on lean muscle mass. I would tell somebody, do wig whey or egg protein or something else. Do you, can you use bone broth that way? Do you use that as your main protein, that powder? Or do you still add a protein supplement if you're doing that?
I add protein from my meals, so yes, I do. I get bone broth, but I also make sure that I have complete protein in my meals because that's an important. And people need to know that. One of the biggest benefits that I want to talk about with bone bro, though, that I really like above and beyond is the fact that not only does it have the gelatin, which is, and the best way I can describe gelatin to folks is that if you get a sunburn, the first thing you're going to do is you're going to reach for, of course, aloe vera. Why? Because it's going to instantly start soothing and it's going to instantly start sealing and really healing that, that, that sunburn. Well, I want you to think about that jiggly stuff, that gelatin going into your gut and healing and sealing it.
Why this is so important is because.
Your wall, your gut wall, your intestines, they have a very, very thin layer. That intestinal wall is so darn thin. If you could just visualize that and how easy it could be to puncture that and how important it is to have spackle, okay? And glycine. And the jiggly stuff is your spackle. So glycine has been shown in studies to actually heal the gut and seal the gut wall. So you get the one, two punch. So between getting the jiggly stuff, the gelatin and Getting glycine and amino acid, getting these two things in combination is just such a beautiful double punch because it just that thin, thin, thin. I want you to think about this when you're eating or when you're thinking about lifestyle practices. And everybody wants to know how to get young and how do we stay young and how do we have what I call stamina? Because stamina can my thing. That's the max. How do you get this? Well, you can't have that thin wall damaged. That's how. That thin, thin, thin lining, you got to be aware that it's there and understand it's got to be healed and sealed at all times.
So one thing I love about bone broth, too, is it's very satiating. Like I on my meal plans, I don't know if you know this, but all my meal plans, in my, like, total Body Thrive program, I. Bone broth is unlimited. I just say drink it all day long, as much as you want. I encourage people to drink it and it keeps them also full. So it's just such a feel good thing. Can you address the vegan question? I don't know if you answer it the way I do, but that's always what I've said. Bones don't grow on trees. But.
I love the way you say, because your way is much funnier, but it's impossible. So the benefits of bone broth. Let me just talk about that for a minute and tell you. It's not vegan, but I'll tell you what you can do instead.
Okay, that's great.
So some of the benefits of bone broth is that you get a really beautiful form of protein, and there's actually quite a lot of protein per serving in bone broth. You're getting amino acids. We're low, our amino acids, and many of us are not balanced. You're getting minerals, by the way, If I could only talk about mineral depletion and how depleted we are in minerals, you're getting that. And when we talk about the amino acid, you're getting that glycine, which is undervalued in today's society and in nutrition, it's undervalued. It's one of those hidden secrets or one of those hidden magic wands. It does so much for you, as does magnesium. We need to talk more about these things because we're deficient. It's got that in there. So a lot of us feel the way we feel because we're not checking off all the boxes. We actually are depleted in a lot of areas. So bone broth helps with those multiple areas of depletion that in addition to. You've got that healing and the sealing of the gut from that beautiful jiggly stuff. So you've got all of that covered. Now, when you're talking about getting a vegetarian source, there are benefits to doing things that mineralize your body, which you can get in vegetarian ways. So very, very hard. The healing and the sealing of the gut, when you're talking about really getting the protein that you need much more difficult.
So there are things that are very difficult to get in terms of the benefits of bone broth, getting it vegetarian. But here's what you can do. If you Google something called potassium broth, it's very interesting to me, and this is what they did in Switzerland and in Europe, and when I studied European and Swiss medicine, they would use this broth, this potassium broth. And what that's going to do is fill in some of those boxes, because really, what we're trying to do, we're trying to nourish ourselves, get that really good feeling. So you can make that potassium broth. Sip on that in a cup, and it's very warm feeling, very healing. It's not going to do as much as the. There's not as many benefits, but it certainly will help. Check some of the boxes.
That's great. Kelly, any. Any difference or problem with choosing chicken bones or turkey bones over beef bones or fish even? Do you have a preference? Does it matter?
Here's what I think. They're all beneficial, all of them. But it's answering the body's needs, which is this, your microbiome. That's all the little bugs that we have, the healthy bugs that we need, they need diversity. So one of the things that you can do for your body, and that's why I talk about prebiotic foods, probiotic foods, why that's important, because the more gut diversity that you have, you have to have a surface area that these microbes can stick to, that they get sucked on. And in order to make that happen and to make these microbes really healthy and work for you, you want to have diversity. And that's why this is really important. And even like rotating some foods, rotating some vegetables, we talk about that. And there's been studies that show if you want to lose weight, one of the things that you can do is not change things up a lot, keep things kind of static for a while until you get the benefits. But for your overall gut health, one of the things that you want to do is make sure. You get prebiotics like onions and garlic and asparagus and artichokes and even banana. I don't know if you encourage that, but even some banana.
Yes, I do.
Yep, these are all prebiotics now. So what is prebiotics? That's the stuff that lays down the fertilizer. After you lay down the fertilizer, you got to get to the probiotics. Things like kimchi, sauerkraut, yoga, kombucha. That's going to build up those healthy bugs, the microbes themselves. So you got to have in order to really create that beautiful terrain. It's variation. Variation helps that.
So before I ask you some more questions about midlife, which I have, and I also want to ask you about how you built your business, because I don't want to skip those two topics. They're both so important. But I do want to touch on this next book that you're doing because it has to do with Bone Broth Breakthrough. What made you want to write this? What can readers expect from that? Because I know you have the Bone Broth Diet. Tell us a little bit about that. And then also your products, like how do people get your products too?
Thank you for that. So I created a book called the Bone Broth Breakthrough that will be out shortly. You can pre order that on Amazon. One of the things that I wanted to do was tell people my personal story. So there is personal story entrenched in there because I think my personal story is worth hearing. Understanding post kids, understanding the absolute exhaustion that we go through and how you can overcome that and how you can even prevent that. So one of the things that I talk about in the book is a stamina pyramid. Really important understanding that there's energy and there's stamina. They're two very different things. Because energy is what I call shotgun energy. We can get that from caffeine, from drinking coffee, energy drinks. But then there's stamina, which is real built in energy. And this real built in energy comes from mitochondrial health. And there's ways that we can do that. Understanding what I call class A nutrition something a new term that I have coined, which is called slim gestion. Understanding really get slim understanding your stress type because you have to understand the way in which you stress out in order to create stress management programs for yourself. These are just some of the things that I talk about in addition to all new recipes that were created just for this book. You can't find them surfing the web and stuff. So this is just a way for you to really understand what is the post Diet. Diet. What do you eat after you've done the programs? Because my five day program, my 15, all the programs, a 21 day program, all these programs I have were to get you to do those three things.
Got it.
And so we need to know how do we navigate after that. And that's what this book is about.
And you talk to us about your products because it makes it so convenient for bone broth. So can people order online? Do they go through? They have to get them in stores. Tell us where. Because I want them to be able to experience if they don't want to make bone broth from scratch, where they can get support from some of your products.
Yeah. So I'm in about 1100 stores right now. We're growing and increasing, it seems. Every week I hear of another retailer that's picked up the products. Super, super excited about them. Some of my favorites are the liquid broths that you find in the tetra packs that you'll find them in Whole Foods. If you go to your local Whole Foods, they're there in Fresh Market and a lot of other places that you'll really enjoy those. Thrilled to be announcing canned soups.
We're having canned. That's amazing.
Yeah, Clean canned soups. And this is what I am really, really proud of. My whole notion of what I want to do is because I know the value of soups and broths and what they can do and bring to you. I want to create a whole CLE line of bone broth based soups and broths that you can enjoy anytime, anywhere. And a lot of my packets were having all these new flavors come out of my packets. So you can buy them on drkellyn.com you can find them on Amazon. You can find them in a lot of retailers. Now we're just moving and shaking.
One more question about midlife and then I want to ask about how you built your business. But I want to end without asking that because this is. I have some. And I won't keep you on forever, I promise. But I know my listeners are dying to know and I want to know too. What? Give us like a little. I just want a gem or a tip like you being in midlife and thriving Because I love talking to women that are thriving in life. Can you speak into what allows you to thrive versus being sucked down? The midlife sucks. I'm in a crisis, my life is over mentality. Because I really do see a divide on that where women tend to either say, I'm Too old, it's too late. I'm give up. This is just the way it's supposed to be. And then I see women like you just completely thriving. Can you help us with what you had to navigate or learn there or change?
Well, first of all, sometimes it really sucks, okay? And I have to really be honest. It's not always. I am a positive person and that's work. So you got to do the work, guys. So my mind. So, you know, we have this tilt or we have this thermometer and we're constantly tilting and we're constantly tilting and some days are more sucky than others. But overall, I know that I am very mission based and purpose based. And if you want the biggest tip to be happy and to not go through midlife crap, get out of any comparison stage, okay? We are not here to compare ourselves to 20 and 30 year olds, okay? Do not get sucked down that trap, that tunnel of. I call it the TikTok tunnel. Don't do it. Understand that we have an equally powerful role. And our equally powerful role is we get to become sages now. And that's really incredible. And I want everyone to really hear that and really listen to that. You don't have to constantly strive. Well, I have to be this 20 year old look. I have to be this 30 year old look. How I focus now is, you know, I look at myself and I put myself in this mentality of wanting to be more sage like and understanding that we. And I got this from studying bands and tribes and understanding the roles in these tribes and bands and how when a woman was in her 50s, how this role would change or when she was in her 40s, her role would change. It's equally as important. It's equally as important. So the younger women would go out and they would gather things and they would gather. They would have the same stamina and the youth to do that, but they would be taking care of the babies or they'd stay up and watch the babies at night. And equally as important, understand that your role as an older woman is as equally as important and you are as definitely as significant and needed in life as you were in your 20s and 30s and 40s. If you're in your 50s. I mean, you matter. You really do matter. And historically you matter.
I love what you just said because I fully feel that when you have a purpose and you feel purposeful and on point, that's what drives it forward and that's how we get out of our heads about the hot Flashes or whatever it Is that's going on as I'm speaking and recording this? I'm having a hot flash. I'm sure I have them a lot these days.
What's that?
Ashwagandha.
Ashwagandha, yeah. Yes. I've tried everything now. It's like, it's just I'm in the thick of it. So it's happening a lot. So. But yeah, and I agree with you though, but it's staying in on purpose that makes me not sulk in that and looking forward. Okay, so I know this is like the big question for not a lot of time, but I want to. I would just love to have kind of an idea of how did you go from I'm going to be a chiropractor, I'm dabbling in nutrition to a nine figure business where your stuff's in stores everywhere. Like, how does that happen?
You know, I always. It was kind of this thing where I had this unique and interesting education because don't forget I had the Swiss medicine thing and I had the nutrition. And when I was in school, when I was in chiropractic school, I ended up becoming. I had this role where I would be the postgraduate chairperson. So what that meant was I would have to get up super early on the weekends. No one wanted to do it, but all I had to do was check a bunch of doctors in, check them on a list and prepare coffees and make sure it was bagels were laid out. And then I got to sit in all these conferences that would have been super expensive for me to pay for, but I didn't pay anything. And I was learning all of this nutrition, all of this nutrition, all of this nutrition. And I was so intrigued and so enamored by this. It's almost like, pay attention folks, to where you go when you're in a bookstore or pay attention to what you're like zooming in on Amazon when you're trying to buy things. Like, it really does tell you something about yourself. Really. My body really responded to that and it was very intriguing to, to me. So I knew that that was going to be something really important in my life. So I end up getting out of school, I have all these really cool, interesting educational bits and pieces. And all my patients were saying, you really should write a book. You should really write a book. You should really write a book. And I want you to. I had nothing. No Facebook, no Instagram, no website, nothing. I didn't know nothing about nothing. So all I knew is that I did have this ability to write and I thought, okay, well, it may make sense. So I ended up. And it took me a while to even figure out how to do this, but I ended up figuring out that there was this book expo in New York called Book Expo New York, and they had it every year. So I thought, I'm going to go talk to as many people as I can.
I'm going to figure out, how do.
You write a book, how do you get it done? And everyone said the same thing. You're never going to get. You need an agent. You're never going to get an agent. When I tell you that there were so many, like, unbelievable parts to this story, and I'm trying to, like, cut it down. But truly, things that. This is why you have to always believe that things aren't always logical that happen. You can't always think, well, that's not a logical next step, or that can't logically happen to me. What you have to really know from my story, I am a barber's daughter. I had no money, I had no contacts. I had nothing. No one in my school, no one in my family got any education. I was the first one. No one went to college. Nothing. Okay, so I'm older than my sister. My sister, you know, she's in college as well. But I'm the first one in my whole family. So you have to. So does it make sense for the barber's daughter to be here in this scenario? Well, what makes less sense is the path. So one of the things I did is I went to this book expo and I'm thinking, how do I write this book? What do I do? What do I do? From that book expo, I got the name of another event that was happening. I go to this other event. There's agents there. So you got to go to this event. This is where the agents are. So I go to this. This thing. And so there is 20 people deep around every agent. I mean, any person would look at that and say, you can't talk to these agents. What do you. I got to write a book. I know that I have to write a book. I. The way to do that, because at that time, it was the door in was through agents. So, okay, I ended up. Long story short, I saw, I thought, how am I going to strategize this? What am I going to do? How am I going to do this? The agent went to the bathroom. And I'm going to be honest with you, I filed the agent into the bathroom. This is a true story. And so they said, right, you know, so he was walking in the door and I didn't go in the bathroom, but I went right up to the bathroom and I said, you know, I'm Dr. Kellyanne, blah, blah, blah. You have to have your elevator speech. Have it ready all the time. Went into, bam. A quick elevator speech, who I am. Ended up talking to him and he said, you're a stallion, aren't you? He said, I'm going to take a chance on you. And he gave me his card. And back then got a card at an event. It was like. And then you walk out like, it's like, you know, you're an American. Just got the card. It's like, oh, my God. You know, she got the card. She got the agent's card, called up next Monday. I ended up getting guys a five book deal with Wiley Publishing. Wow. I wrote a book on Paleo. I wrote a book on a Paleo cookbook. I wrote a book on Paleo fitness. I wrote a book and all of. And that positioned me to be in another event where I was sitting next to the top person at Rodell, who said to me, what else do you got? And guys, I just written five books back to back. When I tell you the fatigue I felt. I had no plans on writing anything, but I knew sure as I was sitting there, there's no way that Marie Ruddell was sitting next to me. I was not supposed to pitch something.
No, of course not.
She said, give me your next project. The next Monday, I went on the plane on the way home from this event. I said, what am I going to write about? What is important? What has been happening? Bone broth. I wrote the proposal, handed it in. No sooner did I hit send that they wrote back and said, we want an exclusive.
Wow.
So then the bone broth diet that I ended up doing a PBS special with that.
No agent, no publicist, no pitching, no.
Pitch deck, no book. I was, I was a regular on Dr. Oz for seven years. His most. One of his most used experts ever. Yep. And I had no publisher, I had no agent. I know what I had no PR person. I had nothing. I had absolutely nothing. You know, went on Good Morning America and the same thing. This is from. This is from really, guys. Like, how bad do you want it?
And so I think it's more than that. I think it's. I think that when you are really on purpose with your vision and you're super clear on what it is that you're helping people with and you have a problem that you can solve for people and you know how to communicate it. That's the formula to me. Like, you had. There was a problem that you could solve for people. You had a very simple, clear answer, and you were passionate about it. And I think, honestly, that's what it takes. I think so many times people are working to build a business or build a brand, and they're. They're just.
They're.
They don't have the elevator pitch. They're all over the place. You ask them what they do, and they have, you know, 100 sentences to describe it, and they don't have a simple solution, and it feels like work. But when you are clear on that solution and you make it super simple for people, I think that's the formula.
I really do.
And you're just. You just. You're an example of that.
I think that's a formula. But I think that there's one step further to that. That the road, even if you have all the gifts in the world, that the road to getting where you may want to get is not an easy road.
For sure.
You have to have two things. You have to have the stamina to do it. It's to keep showing up even when it isn't happening.
Even when you get a no, even.
When things aren't happening. And the second thing is, what I said before, you gotta believe that things happen that don't make sense. Like, why was the. Marie. The things happen that you just can't. That are unbelievable. My company was sold, Dr. Kellyanne. I sold my company during the pandemic when I said I was ready to sell and I wanted to sell. And it was hard times. And nobody's doing anything, nobody's moving. Nothing's happening this time of year. Just wait till the pandemic's over. But that's not what I wanted to do, and that's not what I did do. And so there's always things that happen that aren't supposed to or seem so outrageous, but believe outrageous things can happen.
So good. Oh, I love this. This is so good today. Okay, so first of all, you're just so incredible. Everything that you've shared, not just how you built your business, but just how you're navigating life. Like how you do life, how you're showing up and serving other people. I just want to acknowledge you for that. Because, you know, if you listening are not on this bone broth bandwagon, you are missing out. I'm telling you, it is seriously the fountain of youth. It really is. It'.
It's.
It changes everything. Your joint Pain, your skin, your hair, your nail. Like there's just so many benefits. Your gut, like you said, is so incredible. And I love that you've made this so convenient for people to go get your products, to go read your books and just start applying and learning. So as soon as we're done this interview, I'm pre ordering your book. I can't wait to get it. So just so everyone knows, it's, it's at the time of this recording, whenever you're listening to it, it is either pre sale or it might be available for sale now. You can grab it on Amazon. Will it be available in bookstores too? Kellyanne okay, so everywhere books are sold and then you can get her products. You can get them at Whole Foods, any natural food store. Can they also get it online anywhere? They're your products. They can get on Amazon, on Amazon, everything amazing. Kellyanne, thank you so much for this today. This was so helpful. Thank you.
Thank you so much. I really, it's been, it's been an honor. Thank you.
Thank you for taking the time out of your day to listen in on midlife conversations as my guest guest. If you found this episode valuable, please share it with friends and on social media. Be sure to tag me and our guests so that we can find your share. I'm personally Natalie Jill Fit on all social media platforms. Instagram is the main place I hang out. The biggest thank you that you can.
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