What's REALLY in Your Supplements? Revolutionizing the Health Industry with Ritual Founder & CEO, Katerina Schneider

Katerina Schneider (0:00)

I think we're in the beginning of stages of it, but I think we're changing the way that people think about their supplements.

Everyone deserves to know what they're putting in their bodies and why. We're providing information for people to make confident choices around their health.

Michael Gervais (0:16)

Do you think you're going to change the industry?

Katerina Schneider (0:17)

I think we already have.

Michael Gervais (0:28)

Okay, welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast. I am your host, Dr. Michael Gervais. By trade and training, a high-performance psychologist, and I am so excited to welcome Katerina, Ms. Kat Schneider to the podcast for this week's conversation.

I know you've questioned, I know you've really wondered what's in your supplements. How do you know if those ingredients are actually doing anything for your body? Kat had the same questions, and then she took action to get to the truth. And what she discovered led her to develop a new standard in the world of vitamins and supplements. Kat is the visionary founder and CEO of Ritual. Her journey into the wellness industry wasn't just a career move. It was a personal quest that began during her pregnancy. Faced with the recommendation to take prenatal vitamins, her skepticism about their efficacy and the ingredients inside of them sparked the birth of Ritual, the company that is dedicated to re-envisioning transparency, traceability, and quality standards in the vitamin supplement industry. Kat's story is as remarkable as her products. She immigrated to the United States as a four-year-old refugee with only $50 in a suitcase to her family's name. She went on to earn a degree from an Ivy League university, Brown, and she then carved a path through the worlds of banking and finance and venture capital, even playing a pivotal role in bringing Spotify to the United States.

In our conversation, we dive into the founding story of ritual and we discuss the philosophy that underpins their mission, a deep-rooted belief in transparency, the quality of supplementation, the power of science, and the foundational belief that everyone has the right to know exactly what they're putting into their bodies and why. It's this philosophy and her fundamental beliefs that make me so excited to be partnered with a company like Ritual and the founder like Cat. Cat's insights are not just about supplements. They're about challenging norms, about staying true to your values and the relentless pursuit of innovation. So with that, let's dive right into this week's conversation with Cat Schneider.

Cat, I am so excited to have this conversation with you.

Katerina Schneider (3:00)

I'm very excited as well.

Michael Gervais (3:02)

Yeah. Well, thank you for coming to the Mastery Lab and rolling up our sleeves about your adventure in life, what you've built, how you've gone about building it.

And I thought we'd just start with a bit of your origin story. And so give us a sense of where you grew up and kind of your adventure to get us to this table. So let's start at the beginning.

Katerina Schneider (3:25)

It's a great loaded question.

So I would say the very beginning was I was born in Ukraine and I came to the US when I was around four years old with my family. We were refugees and we moved to a welfare hotel with $50 and a suitcase. And I didn't speak English. My parents didn't speak English. My dad eventually became an entrepreneur.

And my mom actually ended up working on Wall Street getting her MBA, learning English. And my parents had a really big impact on my life and how I think about, you know, what I want to do in the future, what I'm doing today. I ended up always knowing that I wanted to start something. It was always kind of inside of me and part of my DNA. And I saw the ups and downs through kind of our dinner table conversation at home, but I never knew what it was. And in many ways, I think I felt like I wasn't good enough to start something. I ended up working at Lehman Brothers, being part of the biggest bank failure in history, to eventually working for the CEO of Universal Music, being his right hand, helping bring Spotify to the US, and then running an investment fund for Troy Carter, who was Lady Gaga's manager, running a fund of over 70 companies, everything from Uber, Dropbox, Warby Parker, Spotify, and meeting incredible entrepreneurs and founders, knowing that one day that would be me, but I wasn't sure when that would be.

Michael Gervais (5:08)

So there's a couple leaps in there that you just made that I think are really interesting. And so thank you for hitting the high notes. Now let's kind of get into some of the more tenor notes of it. How old were you when you came?