The Truth About Hair Thinning | Nutrafol’s Giorgos Tsetis

Michael Gervais (0:00)

What if the one thing that quietly chips away your confidence in the mirror and the shower and 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 in 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 Giorgios Tsetis, 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 Giorgos.

Giorgos, 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.

Giorgos Tsetis (1:57)

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

Michael Gervais (1:59)

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?

Giorgos Tsetis (2:07)

The business never started because we wanted to just build a business or make money.

It was all started because we, as a group of people, were suffering from a very personal concern that we wanted to solve. And we 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.

Michael Gervais (3:02)

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

Giorgos Tsetis (3:10)

Yeah, it's the 20s.

Michael Gervais (3:11)

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. So is that kind of how it started? Like what's going on here? I'm losing my hair?

Giorgos Tsetis (3:24)

So I started to lose my hair in my early 20s and I 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 a 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.

Michael Gervais (4:22)

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