On the episode this week we welcome Ginney Sanders, a CEO in the health and wellness industry whose philosophy ties together the importance of wellness and the effectiveness of leadership. In her work with RnA ReSet, Ginney has assembled a team and has led them through the pandemic by focusing on health and allowing business success to follow. Her insights into leadership and employee relations can apply to any industry. With over half of the workers in the United States dealing with chronic illness and living on more than four prescriptions a day, now is the time for companies to make preventative healthcare and wellness programs one of their key strategic initiatives.
Ginney’s view of leadership stems from her belief that wellness is not an absence of sickness but rather a measure of how many options and opportunities a person can sustain. She talks about how health can carry a leader through a time of challenge and emerge on the other side successfully. She also speaks about creating healthy relationships with employees. Our conversation ranges from:
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How healthier leaders make better leaders
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Melding passion with the willingness to take risks
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The importance of extending trust to employees
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And more
Don’t miss an important conversation that can change your health and the health of the people you lead. Listen now!
Mentioned in this episode:
Transcript
Ginney Sanders: I think that the biggest thing that any leader should do for themselves personally, besides taking care of the health is you have to take care of your identity. And identity comes from affirmation.
Voiceover: You’re listening to the Vibrant Leadership podcast with leadership speaker and consultant, Nicole Greer.
Nicole Greer: Welcome to the Vibrant Leadership podcast. My name is Nicole Greer. And they call me the Vibrant Coach. And I am here today with none other than Ginney Sanders. She is what we like to call a fun and in charge kind of person. She’s actually the CEO of a really cool company. And she has a full a philosophy that permeates everything she does, which is to have a lot of fun and make money and make people healthy. And whether she’s running a multi million dollar distribution company or organizing a weekend getaway for eight of her closest friends. She takes fun and responsibility and being personable very seriously. So please welcome to the show round of applause for Ginney Sanders.
Ginney: It’s so much fun.
Nicole: Yeah. So So tell us a little bit about the company that you run and how you found yourself in that leadership role, it’s pretty cool.
Ginney: Well, I’m very, very fortunate to work with Dr. Carolyn Dean, who is the CEO of RnAReSet.com, it is her own proprietary health formulation company. And we met through our husbands in 2010. And just you know, rolled out together doing different things. And I started learning a lot about health from her. And one thing led to another and she had an opportunity for somebody to help her with her customer service and distribution. And I said, I’d love to do it. And we started working on that together in 2014.
And we’re still knocking it out, we have a great time together. And it’s very gratifying, especially now, to be able to really, really drill down with people and help them with their health and their health confidence. Because it’s one thing to have good health, it’s another thing to be confident that your health is able to sustain you in a time of challenge. So very, very gratifying work doing right now.
Nicole: That’s fantastic. That’s fantastic. Well, you know, we’d like to talk about different people’s philosophy on leadership. So since you find yourself at the helm of this organization, now, tell me what your philosophy is, and like how you would define leadership?
Ginney: Well, you know, I just had, we just had a going away party for one of our employees who is leader, and he’s finding himself a leader in law enforcement. I think everybody’s a leader. I think that where you find your leadership is with your passion, you know, so whatever you feel called to whatever you feel good at whatever resonates with you, you could be a leader gardening, you could be a leader baking, you can be a leader in your household, you can be a leader. Here in my warehouse, I consider every single one of our people leaders. It’s marrying that passion, with your ability to step forward and take risks.
And usually what people feel confident taking risks about are things that they feel confident about. And usually people feel confident about their passion. Their core being kind of resonates with something in such a way that they’re like, okay, I’m willing to take that risk, because I get what we’re what we’re doing here. Automotive, it doesn’t matter. So that’s the way I feel about leadership, it’s really that inherent quality within everybody. And there’s always that moment in time where it gets called on.
Nicole: Yeah, that’s absolutely true. And so I love this thing that you were called into this company. And I know that you’re passionate about the products that you have, and I’ve actually been exposed to them think they’re fantastic. And so the thing I’m curious about is like, you know, we’ve ever talked about like a leader maintaining their health. But you know, leaders need to be in tip top shape in order to do the work that they do work all these crazy hours and have great cognitive function. And if your body feels bad, it’s hard to do things when your body feels bad, it compromises all your, your faculties. So to talk to us a little bit about what a leader should do to get in tip top fashion, you know, so they can do their job the best?
Ginney: Well, you know, it’s it’s funny how people think about health because they usually think of health as an absence of sickness. They don’t really think about health as extraordinary wellness. And the way that you know you’re well is by the level of of options and opportunities that you can sustain. So wellness really starts at a cellular level. And because we are we are in a environment, in our nature, in our creation in who we are with animals, plants and humans.
And we have the sun and we have the earth. And that’s the way we were designed to function in that ecosystem. And we start migrating away from that too much. things start to get out of balance and get wobbly. And the migrating away from that too much is when we start making lifestyle choices or food choices are whatever that take us away from that balanced position. So what I have really learned so much from Dr. Carolyn Dean is how to maintain that balance of nutrition, movement, outdoor connection to the sun, connection to the water connection to your body, meditation, you know, all those practices are very important.
The challenge is to do them daily. And to see them as the thing that is the most important thing, because when you get into leadership, you have so many different things pulling at you. And some days, it seems really important to talk about the IRS. You know, in some days, it’s really important to be with your number one supplier, but you just can’t do any of those things well, if you don’t have your health.
Nicole: That’s absolutely right. Yeah. So I know that one of the number one things that you and Dr. Dean, talk about because you have a podcast as well. What is the name of the podcast, share with the listeners, the podcast where they could go over and maybe take a listen to all the things that you guys talk about in terms of wellness.
Ginney: It’s called Dr. Carolyn Dean Live, and she is the author of The Magnesium Miracle. She started that journey in 2004. And she was actually asked, no, so she’s a health leader. Right. Working in a very creative and inspiring environment in the late 80s and 90s. Working with AIDS patients in New York. You can imagine how stressful that was right? And demand would never stop, right? And then we’re running racing against the clock to try to find relief, etc. And so here in 2004, she’s on The View, she’s very well known in New York City. And she was contacted by Random House, would you write this book for us about magnesium, we only need 80 pages? And Carolyn said, sure, but what would I write about magnesium?
You know, I mean, 80 pages can you even say that much. And she got into it and started researching it and realize that all her health symptoms were related to magnesium deficiency. So she had heart palpitations, she had stress, she had leg cramping, she had all kinds of things, she was getting tired, rundown. Digestive distress, and that’s when she started taking magnesium. And she started feeling better. And she’s like, oh, my gosh, I gotta tell everybody about this. So the 80 page book became 320 pages. And now with years of research back backing it even further now, it’s almost 700 pages. But now the role of magnesium is so well known that even you know, the NIH has called it a public health crisis.
Cardiologists call it a public health crisis, because it’s so inherently important to the beating and the functioning of your heart and your brain. So now it’s pretty well known. And the differentiating point now is the absorption issue, which we’ve kind of conquered with our product line. But it’s a foundational mineral. And it turns out that a lot of minerals are foundational, as we know, like zinc, we’ve heard a lot about this last year, like potassium, as we know, for as electrolytes as if you’ve ever spent any time in the gym, or your vitamin D, as we know, heard about that last year and vitamin C. So it beautifully elegantly, it’s all coming to the forefront, right. But the challenge, again, is to make that a lifestyle and not a reactionary kind of, oh, you know, I need to do this more like, oh, I really want to do this.
Nicole: Right, right. Yeah. So it’s a lot about mindset. Right. So getting in the mindset that the healthy leader is a good leader, right? Yeah, definitely.
Ginney: Let me just say, from an insurance standpoint, as we all know, now I have a friend whose company, their whole company is dialed into this wellness situation where they give life insurance policy incentives for people to wear a Fitbit. The employees themselves get a reduction in their benefits if they’re walking 5000 steps a day, because movement is so important. You know, we understand and let me just say this very clearly, considering that 70% of our country is sick, overweight, suffering from metabolic syndrome, and actually lives on more than four prescriptions a day.
We weathered this pandemic incredibly well. The steps that we took as a country to save ourselves were critical and amazingly well done, and are co morbidities as a country and this is the perfect time for leaders to say let’s get healthy America. It’s very easy to do. Let’s make better lifestyle choices. And that starts at the top of any company, you know, going into their employees going among their peers, their executive team and saying, look, one thing that we have going for us as a company during this whole situation was we knew. Our company was perfectly safe, because we knew we had the nutrients and the immune system support.
We had no fear in our company of any consequence of this. And that was from fortunately, from the leadership of Dr. Dean and ourselves taking and being proactive, every single one of our employee receives our products at no charge. Of course, that is our health plan. But you know, going beyond that to your company, think seriously about how you are going to put a preventative health care and wellness program in to your company’s profile, because this is not going to go away. You know, now that they figured out what they can do. It’s not going to go away. We’re going to continue to work against ourselves in this virus environment, I think for probably another, you know, 10-15 years.
Nicole: This is sage advice, everybody. I hope you just heard what Ginney said. She said, one of your key strategic initiatives needs to be wellness inside of your organization. That’s what I just heard. So and she can help you with that. Now, if you go over to Dr. Dean talk and listen on the podcast to Dr. Dean Live. Did I get it right?
Ginney: Yes. Dr. Carolyn Dean Live? Yes.
Nicole: Okay. Dr. Carolyn Dean live. Okay. Now, here’s the thing. I went over and listened to the podcast. And so they call you Ginney Almighty. I just love that. I was like, oh, I’ve been I’ve been exposed to Ginney Almighty before. So tell me about Ginney Almighty, because, you know, a lot of leaders, they get like a persona attached to them. It’s often related to their style, their personality, their character traits, but I do see you as Ginney Almighty. So talk a little bit about that. Because I think it’s interesting for people to hear that. That’s funny.
Ginney: That’s funny, that’s funny. Well, I think it just is, you know, I’m not I’m pretty unstoppable when I want something, or when I really believe in something or my passion, you know, is that Almighty nature we all have.
Nicole: We do all have it. That’s right.
Ginney: I’m just willing to own mine. I’m willing to say not in my world. I’m not having this. This is absurd. It’s taking whatever, where you kind of draw a line and just say, no, thank you. Conversely, I’m also willing to say, I’ll have more of that. And I’d like it now, you know. And it takes a little while to find that rhythm inside of yourself, you know, so that you feel confident doing it in a way that people are inspired by I did not offended by it. Because you know, people can be intimidated when you’re confident. But you know what, you know, and that’s probably the almighty part. So yeah, yeah.
Nicole: Yeah. I love that. Because I think I think a lot of women in particular need to own their Almighty, right. So I love what you just said.
Ginney: Absolutely. 100%. And they’ve got it in spades, you know, and it’s just that issue of, of giving yourself permission. But let me say this, I think that the biggest thing that any leader should do for themselves personally, besides taking care of the health is you have to take care of your identity. And identity comes from affirmation. And if you’re, you are going to either affirm your goodness, your blessedness, your wellness, your joyfulness, your powerfulness. Or you’re going to affirm the opposite.
And so really affirmation I think has been a key for me to be confident and to say, yes, I deserve that. Yes, I am good at what I do. Yes, I am almighty. Yes, I am. I am. And that, again, is a journey. So but it starts with the first step, you’ve got to take the first step toward affirming yourself and really seeing yourself and honoring your accomplishments. Because the more you accomplish, the more you realize that you really can do anything.
Nicole: Yeah, yeah, I love that. Okay. So tell me a little bit about, you know, the skills that you’ve put together to get yourself into this position as a as a CEO running this company that, you know, despite COVID did miraculous things in 2020. And so, you know, you’ve got to have some skill sets. And I think sometimes people are like, how do I get ahead? How do I get to the C suite? How do I pull this off? So what do you what have you done in your career that you’ve like, you gathered up these skills and you’ve put them to work? What are they and how do you do that?
Ginney: Well, I will say that, you know, for eight years, I did leadership, awareness and training. And I think personally, the most effective thing for me is a vision board, a declaration, a real and a bold one, because you’re not probably going to get all that way. But you’re going to if you go that far, you are probably going to get here. But if you only go here, you’re probably only going to go here and so it’s that bold declaration of saying, you know, this is, this is my world and I want to rock it this way type of thing. And I didn’t ever think about the C suites as an objective as far as that particular thing I mostly thought about just, but I’m very competitive.
So I think one is, you know, the minute I see I have something better than somebody else, and everybody needs to know about it. That’s my kind of clarion call. So you have to also find your own little space of what is really willing, you’re willing to fight for I would say, you know, or compete with or however you motivate yourself. And then you just go for it, you know, and you keep going for it, you affirm yourself, and take stock of those victories, as you’re going along the way, I remember when we first wanted to list our brand on Amazon, for example. And that was in 2014, I think before Amazon was doing as what they’re doing now. Right.
And I remember at that time, I just wanted to get 15 orders a month on Amazon. I just wanted 15 orders, you know, and I knew it was gonna be big, but I just wanted that little piece to just get it started. So declare your goal with your vision in mind. So you’ve got goals and visions. And now we do a lot on Amazon. And it’s right. And so it’s that combination of you’ve got your big declaration, and you’ve got your little short. And then when you get those 15 you just I just huddled over him like little nesty eggs and very grateful. And then it grows and grows and grows.
Nicole: That’s awesome, that’s awesome. All right, so when you think about your employees, and like how you look at her face right now, everybody, if you’re watching on YouTube, you definitely get her face because she loves her employees. So yeah. And I think as as women leaders that I work with you you have a really unique way you deal with them. And what I see is you extend them a lot of trust.
Ginney: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nicole: And so how would you frame how you treat or deal with your employees? Or what do you think is essential to that?
Ginney: Well, you know, I love the human experience. So I’m probably unique in that way. I actually love to see people grow. I’m not that micromanager, per se. Now I like to learn a lot from my employees, if I like somebody I just hired is very technically competent, and I’m not. So I like to get in there and figure things out. I’m not micromanaging him, I’m learning from him. And then you know, I let go. But people are so fantastic. I just think and they have so much they want to contribute. Everybody wants to feel as good as I do. And I know what I feel good about is when I’m contributing, when I’m making a difference when people acknowledge what I do well, and that’s how I want to treat every and also when I make mistakes, I don’t want it brought up and flung in my face a million times, you know, it’s like, oh, yeah, that kind of wasn’t great.
And then you just move on. So that’s kind of what I do. I just want people to feel good. I want them to love what they’re doing. When they make the mistake. It’s not rubbing it in their face. It’s like, yeah, yeah, you know, and we kind of have a joke, you know, in the company now that it’s like, you get your first one, the first one’s free, and you’re always going to make a big one. And it’s going to be, you’re probably going to send 50 boxes to the wrong place. And we’re all just going to laugh and say you got it over with you know, and it’s fine. So it’s kind of like that, you know, love the human experience and let them have that room to grow and be themselves because they will surprise you with their creativity. And what they bring to the table. Absolutely.
Nicole: Yeah, yeah. So, one of the things that I always encourage leaders to do, and you’ve been doing it ever since I’ve known you is you have you have what we what we’ve been calling a deep dive onboarding with brand new employees. And when I go out and work inside of companies, Ginney, I just see that like, they’ve been in a state where they didn’t have this position filled. So there’s already like a sucking vacuum in the company, right there. And then the minute they get that person they like stick them in that hole stops the sucking noise. But then that person is just kind of out there by themselves. Yeah, overwhelmed. So you have this four week deep dive that you do with new employees. And while while that sounds great, it’s like four weeks. How does she do that? So I’m curious when you share with us kind of your ideas about that, that really awesome onboarding experience your people have?
Ginney: Well, we have that right now because we did lose our social media coordinator and we are bringing a social media coordinator in and you know, the whole thing about, you know, posting every 15 seconds and not you know, that that technical side will just drive you if you you know, to make I think bad decision sometimes even. What’s most important to me about any new employee is that they know that they’re here for the long haul. And they are part of a bigger picture and a bigger family. I want them to feel like, we do care about you. We want you to understand our product.
We want you to understand our commitment to help, we want you to understand our commitment to each other, we want to understand our relationship. We want you to understand the technical aspect and we are in a compliant business. You know, the FDA is a compliant, it’s a regulator of our business, we want you to understand the legal implications. I would never put her out there to post one thing until she understands all that. And now, all the other ones are like hurry up and get here and I’m like, nope, she’s not posting now, I’ll go in and post something and mess it up. Before I will ask her to go in and post that thing because I want her to be able to be and plus I really believe in energy. And you know, the difference between the energy of yes, I’ve got this and oh, do I have this? Huge.
Nicole: Oh I love that. I absolutely love that. Okay, did y’all hear that? She said that. If you put an employee out doing their roll with the energy of doubt and angst, you’re going to get a result of doubt and angst. If you put somebody out there with the energy of I’ve got this, I know what I’m doing. I’m so excited, you’re going to get a result of of excited, okay, so that’s huge. That’s, that’s genius. I love it. Okay. So if you were mentoring somebody to, you know, be a leader in the future, you know, and you wanted to give them like one special piece of advice that you’ve learned, what would be that one special thing like, always remember this?
Ginney: Be yourself. Be yourself 100%. Don’t try to be anybody else. If you can’t be yourself, go someplace else. Be yourself 100%. Because that is the authenticity is where the source of true creation comes from. And if you can’t be yourself, I remember I had this gal I was coaching one time in a leadership program. And she gave me some bogus, you know, letter of accomplishment, three things she wanted to do. And none of them resonated, it was flat and her energy was flat and everything. And we played the game for a couple weeks. And finally I said, look, what really, you know, do you want to do? And she almost started crying. And she said, well, she said, she’s almost embarrassed.
She said, You know, I would just really love parrots. And she said in I want to have a parrot rescue. And she said, and people don’t understand about parrots, they buy them in the store, they think they’re pretty they don’t understand what it takes to maintain them, then they abandon them, then they get hurt. She goes on this big thing about parrots. And I was like girlfriend, you better do that parrot rescue, right? Like that’s the thing that we put on your leadership declaration right there. And not only did she go on and do it, but she ended up meeting a fellow parrot rescuer who she ended up marrying and now they have a family together. Right?
Nicole: And parrots in every corner of the house.
Ginney: Right? Exactly. So that’s the it. Be yourself and don’t put on a thing for anybody else or you know, if you can’t be yourself like I said, walk away, do something where you can really shine. Your authentic self.
Nicole: And I love what she just said she said you can let yourself shine we all know that Nicole Greer has the SHINE methodology, so I love that! That is awesome. Okay, well, to wrap us up here you know, people are sitting there going I gotta get me some magnesium number one, number one. Number two, I got to make the wellness wouldn’t you call it the extreme wellness program?
Ginney: It’s just but you do have to make a commitment to wellness for sure. Absolutely. Yeah.
Nicole: Fantastic. Yeah. And then and then this part about getting your people ready and feeling great about their work so that they can go do their work. Okay. So I love that and be your authentic self. So those are the four big takeaways everybody if you didn’t write them down you need to you know, rewind, listen again rewind that’s not a thing you need to move the little arrow backwards.
Ginney: Rewind shows our age.
Nicole: Okay, that’s okay. You know, or my father in law said nobody respects you till you get a couple wrinkles. Alright, so tell us a little bit about where we can find your products and where we can find Dr. Carolyn Dean so we go can go in and listen about how we can make ourselves healthier and better for our company. So will you share all that for us?
Ginney: Sure. Dr. Carolyn Dean is available on YouTube and our radio show is Dr.CarolynDeanLive.com. We’re live every Monday night. The brand the products are actually at rnareset.com. RNA being the precursor DNA. So that’s where we say we start is even before you get to DNA, we’re with you at RNA at the real foundation of your health. rnareset.com and it’s all there. ReMag is our product also on Amazon. And of course, you can find me through the radio show or at support, support@rnareset.com. I’ll respond to any email through that email address.
Nicole: All right, so you’d be foolish not to reach out to Ms. Ginney Sanders. Ginney Almighty, it’s been so great to have you on the Vibrant Leadership podcast. And I appreciate your time and energy. I hope you have a great rest of your day.
Ginney: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. It’s really an honor. And Nicole is absolutely great. So let me just say my plug because the reason she knows our employees so well is because she’s hired so many of them for us and it’s one of the best recruiting situations I’ve ever worked with. Actually, even our employees have said that they’ve they’ve dealt with tons of recruiters in their job search executive level and otherwise, and nobody can touch her. So kudos back too girl.
Nicole: Thank you so much. All right, everybody. Have a great rest of your day.
Ginney: Yes, absolutely.
Voiceover: Ready to up your leadership game? Bring Nicole Greer to speak to your leadership team, conference or organization to help them with her unique SHINE method to increase clarity, accountability, energy and results. Email speaking@vibrantculture.com and be sure to check out Nicole’s TEDx talk at vibrantculture.com/TEDTalk.
