Kat Schneider: Founder & CEO of Ritual

Episode 608

On this episode of The Kara Goldin Show, I’m joined by Kat Schneider, Founder and CEO of Ritual, a health and wellness brand that is redefining transparency in the supplement industry. Kat shares her personal journey of launching Ritual after being unable to find a prenatal vitamin she could trust while pregnant. This led her to create a new standard for high-quality supplements, including the first visible supply chain in the industry, known as "Made Traceable™." We dive into how Ritual is creating science-backed products tailored for women at every life stage, how they ensure quality with rigorous third-party testing, and the journey of building a B Corporation that has garnered the trust of over a million customers. Kat also shares how she balances growing Ritual while being a mother, and what’s next for the company as they continue to innovate.
Tune in to hear Kat’s insights on entrepreneurship, transparency in wellness, and the future of Ritual. Now on The Kara Goldin Show!

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up that I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be you. Just want to make sure you will get knocked down. But just make sure you don’t get knocked out, knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs and really, some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show today. I am absolutely thrilled to be joined by Kat Schneider, who is the founder and CEO of Ritual. And if you haven’t tried Ritual, you must, must, must try this product. It’s a health and wellness brand that’s shaking up the supplement industry with its transparency first approach, and Kat’s personal journey of searching for a prenatal vitamin is what led her to create Ritual, and it now serves millions of consumers and has become, like I said, one of the most trusted names in the space. And not only that, but Ritual is certified B Corporation, love that, and has pioneered traceable sourcing for supplements. So this is Kat’s first startup, but she came from another industry, in the music industry, we sort of knew a lot of mutual people really, really excited to meet her. I’ve been a fan of her products, and can’t wait to hear more about her story, how she’s managed to grow this company to the success that it’s at now, and just super thrilled to have her here today. So welcome, Kat.

Kat Schneider 1:56
Thanks for having me. As you know, I’ve been such a big fan of yours, even before I started Ritual. And so it’s like a full circle moment to be here speaking with you and sharing my story. Wow. Pinch me.

Kara Goldin 2:10
I love it. I love it. So let’s start by just talking about first, what is Ritual? How do you define it? To somebody who’s never heard of the product? Sure. So

Kat Schneider 2:20
virtual is a health company that is setting a totally new standard in the supplement industry through traceable science and traceable sourcing. And I love to explain to people, you know, the the origins of why I even started this company, because I think it helps illuminate the importance of sourcing and science in this industry. And as you know, the industry has exploded from 4000 to 90,000 supplements in the last 30 years, and there haven’t really been any major updates to regulation. And so that’s a big reason that led me to to start the business. I started the business when I was four months pregnant with my first daughter of three in my belly, and I always knew that I wanted to be an entrepreneur. I was inspired by you, Kara, and I was investing in startups in LA, as you mentioned, we had so many mutual friends, and I was just so inspired by entrepreneurs, but there was nothing that kept me up at night where you just have this idea and you can’t put it away until I got pregnant, and I realized that the prenatals on the market didn’t meet my standards whatsoever When it came to true science. Think products had ingredients elevated levels of heavy metals, all the way to products that were lacking in key essential nutrients that women needed during some of the most critical life stages that they had. And so I started the journey just thinking about, wow, we really need to change the standard in this industry. We actually launched a multivitamin as our first product and not a prenatal, because I wanted to earn the trust of that consumer. And now that product has a peer reviewed and published human clinical study with a leading university. It has a patent on the delivery technology and also USP verification, which less than 1% of supplement companies have, and now we have the leading pre, one of the leading prenatals in the US, and really building a platform for women’s health through through traceability.

Kara Goldin 4:32
That’s awesome. And you did not come from biotech or healthcare. I mean, that was not what you were doing before. How did you know how to do this? I mean, it’s one thing to have a passion for a product and see a need for it in the market, but then you just said, you know, I’m just gonna go do this.

Kat Schneider 4:53
It was scary. I would say, just like any entrepreneur, it’s like scary to go into an industry where you have no. Experience, but you have this deep passion and almost like a driving force behind you, and so I knew that I quickly needed to a raise money to hire the right scientists and team around me to build expertise in those areas that I was lacking. It wasn’t, you know, it wasn’t a food product, it wasn’t a skincare product, it was a product that people were putting inside their bodies every single day that needed science and clinical studies and investment and testing and quality. So actually, I raised our first round when I was pregnant, and raised over a million dollars to do the right thing, frightened, and I had male investors, maybe some of which, you know, tell me that I could either start a family or a business, but I couldn’t do both, and I decided to do both. And it was this driving force behind me that that led me to just kept pushing me, even though I didn’t have the right background, the right background, right?

Kara Goldin 5:59
Yeah, but I think that I always say that, you know, passion and curiosity are the things that are going to get you up every single day to go and figure out the problem and figure out how to, you know, solve the hole that’s in the market, or fill the hole, I should say, that’s in the market. So it totally, totally makes sense. So one of the things that I love about your about Ritual is its transparency first approach. And you have coined the term made traceable. And I would love to hear what is that exactly for consumers that might not be as educated about it. It’s

Kat Schneider 6:43
a made traceable. Comes from the idea that women deserve to know what they’re putting in their bodies and why, especially during this time and when we when I looked at the supplement industry, I realized that because of the explosion we were the industry was asking consumers to do their own work, like, Is this safe? Is this effective? Does this work? Is it going to hurt me? And that’s simply insane. And you know, there’s so many industries, whether it’s the food industry or the or the skincare industry, where there’s been so much evolution when it comes to science and sourcing and clean and and clinical studies, but in this category, just wasn’t the case. And so I think about made traceable. I think about traceable science and traceable sourcing. I think about Rituals commitment to have 100% traceability on our products, so you can go on our site and see where the ingredients come from in the world, why they’re there, down to the supplier. And then I also think about traceable science, and this idea of, does it work? Prove to me that this works? And so we have a commitment to have human clinical studies on every single one of our products by 2030 why this is important is, you go on the market today, you pick up a product, it says science fact, it says clinically studied. What does that mean? There’s no There’s no define there’s no agreed upon definition of what those terms mean. It’s similar to the term natural there. It doesn’t mean much. And so what you have is products that have maybe an ingredient that has a clinical study, but it’s not in the form and dosage that matches that study. And then, you know, the Holy Grail is actually to study the entire product in a in a placebo, controlled study with the right population. And that’s exactly what we’ve committed to. So it is, it is it is really setting that new standard, not just for our products, as you know, I have three girls like but really setting the standard for the entire industry, so that any products that that I use for my family has the standards that I want to see for our health. And so that’s what made traceable means, you know, to us and to me,

Kara Goldin 8:57
that’s, that’s incredible. And so you are all online right now, is that correct?

Kat Schneider 9:04
No, so we started the company online. As you know, my background was an investor in the tech space, and when I saw it was actually the biggest issue was when I looked at the supplement aisle, there was almost very little information around ingredients and transparency and the transparency and where the ingredients were coming from, I could find out where the eggs that I was buying for my kids, what pasture they were raised on to, you know, where the kale was grown on the chickens. But when it came to supplements, we were just talking about this, there’s so many issues around heavy metals and clinical studies, and there was just no information. Like, why couldn’t I know where my vitamin D was coming from? Ours comes from, like in from the UK. Why can I know where my wife folate comes from? Ours comes from Italy, or Megan threes come from Nova Scotia. And I wanted to put more information out in the world, and the only way could do that was going online first. So we’re digitally native company. Me. But in the last two years, we’ve expanded Omni channels, so we are also in Target nationwide, and we’re also in Whole Foods, and we are, you know, and we’re also on Amazon, where recently we’re the number one prenatal there as well. So it’s been really exciting to grow from, you know, the instinct of creating traceability online, digitally, and building that trust to then expanding in other channels and meeting our consumers where they are. But the challenge has been, how do we provide that level of depth and information on a unit carton? How do we connect, you know, all the all the things that we do, from a clinical study to a certification to the traceability of ingredients to why that should matter in such a small amount of space. And I think we’ve done a really good job, but nowhere does it compete for with what you see online. And I think that’s why we’ll always be really tied to our digital origins as a brand?

Kara Goldin 11:04
Yeah, definitely. I totally get it. So I remember when we were first launching hint, and you know, you’d have these little shelf talkers that were so tiny, and how do you get all of the messaging in that you really want to get in? And you know, this was even before digital was what it is today. So how, how have you built this trust with consumers? I mean, I think that the best thing, and I’ve seen a lot of this in your in your brand and in your marketing, is consumer, you know, just talking about it and saying, Wow, it’s really working. And, I mean, I think that that’s the beauty of digital too. But I’d love to hear you know what you’ve learned about how do you get the consumer to really not only know about your brand, but also trust it, and then get your velocity up to keep buying it.

Kat Schneider 11:55
Trust is a is a powerful word, that is you work hard to earn, and I think about our products, and I thought about this since the beginning, that we’re not just selling transparent products, but we’re selling transparent information. And what does that mean? And having that alignment since day one, is allowed us to not just work hard in selling the product and the cleans, but the information that allows our consumer, we call them the healthy skeptic, or the Chief Health Officer of the household, to make the most confident choices for her health, because she does want to do the work, But she also wants a trusted brand that’s done the work. And so it’s those, those kind of trade offs that that that I think have earned the trust for us, with the consumer. I would say that the sequencing of how we’ve launched product has built our trust. So we started we a lot of people think of us as a prenatal brand, but it’s just one of our many products. We are a leading prenatal in the US, but we didn’t launch it at first, even though it was my own personal journey and what I was so passionate about in the early stages. It actually waited several years to launch a prenatal. We put the multi out for women 18 plus, and we said, hey, we’re going to do all the right things at every step in turn. We’re going to, you know, hire a team of scientists. We’re going to in, put the right ingredients in the right forms, the right dosages, higher quality, great traceability, invest in the clinical study, invest in what’s the hardest certification to get? That was USP, you know, what’s what? How does that get into the body? You know, there’s a delayed release component. There’s and in the way that capsule is designed, let’s get a patent on that. We got a patent on that, and then we also did a clinical study with a university, like, did everything right, and we put this product up, put our best effort in, and then waited two years until customers were saying, Hey, can you make a prenatal? Like we want you to make a prenatal, and a prenatal as you know, pregnancy is one of the most vulnerable stages in your life, it’s so hard to earn the trust of that consumer. I was nervous that we wouldn’t be able to do that as an online brand, and so the sequencing actually helped us earn that trust. We put the prenatal out. It was a big hit right away because we had, we had worked so hard on that trust, and then we’re like, what’s our next product? And what’s happened for us is that we now have hundreds of 1000s of subscribers on our site, and there they’ve become our think tank. And we asked them, what do you what do you want to see next? And it was a resounding yes for gut health. Obviously, gut health and gut health issues have exploded, unfortunately in this country for a variety of reasons, but, you know, gas floating regularity, where a lot of the issues that are. Customers were dealing with, and we decided to put that out, that product within the first year, did over $30 million in sales. Wow, yeah, it was insane, because we had built this loyal following and people that just trusted us when it came to safety and efficacy for this really key inflection point in their life where they needed it the most. And so that sequencing, I think, is actually like, you know, I don’t reflect on it as often, but I think the sequencing and doing fewer things, but doing them really well, is what helped us earn the trust amongst all the, you know, all the science and all the stuff that we’re doing that was kind of like the subtle thing to win, really, in the category. So

Kara Goldin 15:48
one of the things you talked about was launching first with the multivitamin. Today. How many products do you have in your selection?

Kat Schneider 15:57
We have about 12 SKUs, and we have, we’ve gone really deep in reproductive health. Our goal is to be the number one company when it comes to reproductive health in the category. And so we launched a prenatal we more recently, launched a fertility product as well, as well as choline and a postnatal choline is actually one of my favorites.

Kara Goldin 16:24
We’ll tell you about that later. Yeah, no, I want to hear about it. Yeah. So choline

Kat Schneider 16:28
is so exciting. It’s something I also give to my kids. We put in our protein powder, and we’ve gone really deep in pregnancy, but we’ve also, as I mentioned, kind of deeply understood what our consumers targeted needs are, from gut health to sleep to stress to even wrinkle wrinkle support. And I would say the thing that gets me most excited is actually how deep we’ve gone and how deep we’re going in reproductive health in particular, and really creating almost new categories that haven’t existed, because it’s the right thing to do. You know, when I like, when I was starting Ritual, I had a hard time fundraising, because people were saying Women’s Health is niche, pregnancy is niche, plus part of niche, menopause is niche. All the things are niche, but then together, they make up this entire experience that we have as women. And I’m just like, This is insane. I don’t trust you. I’m just gonna go for it, and I and and trust my instinct. And so that’s what we’ve done. We went from for we went fertility, pregnancy, post postnatal. We actually created a separate postnatal because that’s incredibly nutritionally demanding stage in a woman’s life. And then choline, choline is something that I’m deeply passionate about, and something that I was told was incredibly niche. It didn’t really have a market, but we were working with a researcher from Cornell, and she did this really interesting study where she followed women who were taking choline, moms that were taking choline during their pregnancy, and then followed the children who were born up to seven years of age, and saw the impact that Mom taking choline had on adolescent brain development processing speeds. And so it was fascinating that you know what a mom is eating, the supplements that she’s taking, certain nutrients can have, and the impact that they have on on the next generation. And so that led us to develop a needle choline, and it’s just doing so well because it’s become become a lot more well known, I think, by the medical community as well as consumers, that this is essential, and this can actually impact outcomes for babies and growing children. So those are the things that kind of, you know, get me fired up and excited outside of, you know, meeting our consumer needs around protein and digestive health and wrinkle reduction, I think I’m just telling you, we have a skin care product that we ran a clinical study on over 90 days that showed it a decrease in pro speed by 300 over 300% and I’m like, this is, this is amazing, like we knew there was going to be an impact. But that impact was just outstanding for us.

Kara Goldin 19:26
That’s so, so great. I can’t wait to try it. So that’s that’s amazing. So you are certified B Corporation. We’ve talked about this on the show in the past, but why was that so important for you to get certified B Corporation, and how difficult was it to get that? Yeah,

Kat Schneider 19:47
it was. It was important since day one. I think aligning people, planet and profit together has always been my vision since, since the beginning, and I think, but do. It in a really kind of systematic way, where we’re actually measuring our impact on the planet. One thing that we talk about a lot internally, and I give our chief impact officer, Lindsay doll, all the credit for she’s incredible, is just that this industry cares so much about people’s health, but has been asleep at the wheel of one of the biggest health impacts and health crises of our time, which is climate change. And so for us, getting the B Corp certification, starting to measure carbon impact, setting a goal of net zero by 2030 and making reductions like actually systematically measuring our impacts and making those reductions to hit our goal is something that I’m really proud of, because I think oftentimes there’s just so much greenwashing happening in an industry that is supposed to be focused on health. And I just for us again, like anything else that is like leading the charge that is super important so that, so that other brands and other you know individuals can Can, can follow if they want,

Kara Goldin 21:15
definitely. So I always think when people you know, say, like, oh, I want to be an entrepreneur. They, you know, they’re looking at Kat and saying, oh my gosh, she just has it all together. It’s all like, you know, you know, roses and whatever. But I always know, especially the successful companies, you can’t outsource everything. You really have to be willing to roll up your sleeves if you were to kind of think back on maybe some of the most unsexy moments, as I say, of building building Ritual. I remember when we were first building hint, and everybody told us, You can’t actually develop a product that doesn’t have preservatives in it. I didn’t want I wanted to use real fruit and no preservatives. And every bottle or that I talked to was like, Nope, can’t be done. And then finally, I found this one guy in Santa Cruz who had an apple orchard and a small production line. He’s like, I don’t know if you want to come down, but the only time I can actually meet with you. Is 11 o’clock at night, and I’m like, I’m coming. First of all, I had four kids under the age of four, so I’m like, Okay, I’m gonna get a babysitter and get grab my husband, and we went down and but you know, there’s a lot of people who maybe are super experienced, who’ve worked at large companies, who you know, wouldn’t do that, but again, like I wanted to solve the problem. I was curious all of those things. Do you have any stories like that where you’re trying to build and you know, you like, maybe your parents or your friends would never believe it. They’re like, Wait, Kat, you did that. That’s crazy.

Kat Schneider 22:55
No, it’s so many stories like that. I think that it’s like this, it’s hard to explain the drive that you have when you’re trying to solve something and somebody’s telling you, no, it can’t be done. I think the most for me, it’s just so energizing when people say no. I so much so that I made it a value at our company, embrace the nose. Embrace the no’s has become one of our values, where if someone says no, it actually means it hasn’t been done before. So it’s so exciting, like similar to you, to figure out how to do this without preservative. There’s so many twists and turns around starting this business from, you know, no, you can’t start a business and have a family. Well, we both proven that we can. You know, the idea that, when I was starting the company, they were like, Oh, you have to use sugar at the core of this bead lid, and you have to use talc or shellac or PvP, and all these things that have been used in pharma to deliver, to use this kind of delivery mechanism, like, no, or I do not want to put that in my body. Let’s figure it out together, you know. And then someone telling me that it the product is going to cost, manufacturers telling me it’s gonna cost $200 to sell our product because of how expensive it was to make it. I’m like, no, no, we’re gonna figure this out. I’m creating a subscription, you know, like, there’s so many elements to just driving and pushing forward. My Funny story is, actually, I was, I really wanted Ritual.com and we talked about trust in the beginning of the episode. And I was like, you know, I don’t want Ritual vitamins. I just want Ritual. I love the idea of, how do you elevate a routine to a habit, to a Ritual? Ritual being the ultimate, the thing that you look forward to doing every single day, and I want virtual.com I want virtual on all the channels, and I’m going to figure out how to get it. Our investors were saying, hey, that’s crazy. Stop wasting your time on this. So I reached out to the guy that owned virtual.com and he would, he was like, parking lot in it for some gaming company. And they said, How much do you want for it? It was. Was basically more than I raised, right and and so I got to know him. I spent, I spent so much time calling him to the point where, like, what do you want? And he’s like, Well, I really want. I had him open up. And he’s like, I really want this other domain, this four, four letter domain, jolt. And I’m like, alright, well, if I get jolt up.com and I trade you for Ritual.com and like, this is genius. So then I worked on the guy that had jolt.com and then I was like, You know what jolt is a shorter word, and probably it’s more costly. So he, she paying me, um, and so just like, figuring out ways like to me that, and I think it’s the important thing. You know, eight plus years into running this business is like not forgetting that and not forgetting that as a founder, that is your secret, secret sauce. I recently wrote an article around founder mode versus manager mode. And do you scale? You have, you know, hundreds of employees, your business is doing hundreds of millions in revenue, and you feel like you have to be like, this perfect manager that’s just man, that hires good people and manages them well. And the second I feel like that, I’ve lost that thing that you and I are talking about, which is, you know, we figured out how to do this without preservatives, or we figured out how to get that domain that I’ve lost, like, the essence of what makes a founder led business incredibly special. And I can tell you so many times where, where I failed at that because I thought I had to be a manager. And so balancing that, I think, is, has been something that I’ve learned. I would say, the last two years, as the business has scaled really well? And not forgetting that, that what, what drove us in the beginning, right?

Kara Goldin 26:46
Yeah, definitely. And the soul of the brand, right? It’s, it’s, it’s definitely, it’s such an important aspect of it for for sure. And it’s, you know, it’s the North Star. It’s the Guiding Light of the company so, and you’ve definitely proven that. So well, Kat, so, so amazing to have you here with us, and it’s called Ritual. Again, we’ll have all the info in the show notes, and everyone needs to go on and subscribe, purchase products, try and they’re not just prenatal. They are much more than that, like Kat was talking about the skin and the the multivitamin and also the pre and probiotics. Incredible, incredible stuff. So really, really great. So thank you. Kat really loved our conversation.

Kat Schneider 27:39
Thank you so much. I’m so inspired by you, and this is so fun. Thank you.

Kara Goldin 27:43
Thank you. Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin show. If you would please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast, just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin, I would love to hear from you too. So feel free to DM me, and if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy of my Wall Street Journal, best selling book, undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building hint. We are here every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now. Bye.

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