Maureen Ballatori opened Season Eight of the Spilled Salt podcast with a return to the show’s core focus, “the thrills and spills from the food, beverage, and agriculture industries,” with an operator story built for entrepreneurs navigating functional food, wellness, and CPG growth across the United States.
From Clinical Pharmacy to Building a National Bone Health CPG Brand
The episode features Dr. Jennifer Han PharmD, the co-Founder and co-CEO of Seen Nutrition, a bone health brand built around supplements made exclusively from food. Jenny brings clinical credibility as a board-certified clinician with eight years of clinical pharmacy experience and serves in advisory roles connected to menopause and osteoporosis.
Postpartum Osteoporosis and the Origin of Seen Nutrition
Jenny explained how her career was shaped by interdisciplinary care models and why they matter for chronic conditions: “You can’t just look at something and throw medication at it and expect it to work.”
That framework became personal in 2020: “During COVID, I had my daughter and, two months postpartum, I fractured my spine.” The diagnosis, pregnancy lactation osteoporosis, forced a pause that led to Seen’s origin.
Disrupting the US Calcium Supplement Industry with Real Food Based Functional Nutrition
Seen Nutrition offers a case study in differentiator clarity, intentionally focusing on a nutrition facts panel rather than similar products in the supplement space. Jenny described it plainly: “the hallmark difference between us and everything else on the market is that we’re the only calcium too that’s made from real food ingredients.”
Another key differentiating factor has been flavor. Jenny shared how other calcium supplements are made, and how the real food ingredients benefit the taste of the Seen Nutrition products. It was a contributing factor in their win at the prestigious Grow-NY pitch competition as well.
Direct to Consumer Growth Across All 50 States with Organic Referrals and Provider Partnerships
Seen’s trajectory has been driven by authentic, community-driven growth, heavily reliant on a robust referral model. This organic momentum has propelled the company’s reach far beyond initial expectations with customers in all 50 states as well as a waiting list of Canadian customers.
A critical component in accelerating this early organic spread was the strategic deployment of trusted expert amplification. Rather than relying solely on large-scale, impersonal marketing campaigns, Seen focused on getting their product and message into the hands of influential individuals whose endorsements carried significant weight. This proactive, direct approach proved to be an invaluable lever. It turned influential individuals into early advocates, further fueling the referral engine that remains central to Seen Nutrition’s success.
What Is Next for Seen Nutrition: Clinical Research with Cornell and International Expansion
Seen Nutrition is now building proof and planning scale. “We have a clinical study underway with Cornell,” plus new products planned for “2026 in the spring and then the summer,” and potential expansion north. Jenny also has a vision for Seen Nutrition captures that spirit of grounded disruption. “I want Seen to be the bone health company for women, for men, for the first one in their mind to turn to when it comes to bone health nutrition. And if they have an osteoporosis diagnosis, osteopenia, whatever, they turn to Seen first.”
Transcript
This transcript has been edited from its original form to support readability.
Maureen Ballatori: Welcome back to everyone. This is Season Eight of the Spilled Salt podcast. We took a little break the last half of 2025 just to make sure that we were adding value with this podcast. That’s always the goal and that we had the time and space to continue to do it right.
We are excited to be back and today’s guest is a perfect person to bring us right back into the trenches of what I love about a great podcast interview because she is thoughtful, she is experienced, and she’s telling the full story of what it means to grow a business, which is a lot of what I love to bring forward here through the podcast interviews.
I am Maureen Ballatori and this is Spilled Salt, a podcast on the thrills and spills from the food beverage and agriculture industries. Today’s guest is Dr. Jennifer Han PharmD. She’s the co-Founder and co-CEO of Seen Nutrition. After multiple spinal fractures and an early diagnosis of a rare form of osteoporosis, Jenny is now focusing on developing supplements for bone health made exclusively from food.
Jenny serves on the Medical Advisory Committee for the National Menopause Foundation and as a corporate advisor for the Bone Health and Osteoporosis Foundation. Jenny’s co-CEO and co-founder, Dr. Adrienne Bitar PhD, is also an industry expert in health and wellness as well.
Jenny is a board-certified clinician with eight years of clinical pharmacy experience treating patients with a full scope of practice to prescribe medications for chronic conditions like diabetes, obesity, hypertension, pain, and heart disease.
We talked about that today on the pod about what it means to get full care too from a health and wellness perspective, which is fascinating to me. But really, Jenny is passionate about nutrition and diet, and she has received training in functional medicine with a specific focus on the gut to connect Western medicine and holistic care, which as you’ll find in today’s discussion have all led her to create and start seeing nutrition. Enjoy the conversation.
Maureen: Hey Jenny, how are you? So great, lovely to see you. Thanks for taking the time to join me today.
Dr. Jenny Han: Good, how are you, Maureen? Thank you for having me on. I’m excited for our conversation.
Maureen: Me too. I love to start at the beginning with any, any guests that we bring on. I’m a big believer that no one’s career path is linear. And so I’d love to start like way back at the beginning, literally when you were a kid, where did your interest in medicine begin? And tell me a little bit about that.
Jenny: Yes, this will be fun to think back where everything began. So I grew up in the Bay Area in a really small suburban bubble town called Danville. If you’re not from the Bay Area, then you’ve never heard of it. It’s that small. So I grew up in Danville in California my whole life. I really gravitated towards science and health and math, because I wanted to do something completely opposite of my sister, my older sister. She did speech and debate. She majored in ethnic studies. And so that’s kind of how it started.
But then as our paths continue to diverge, I realized, I actually really do like this stuff. And the passion started to grow. But yes, that’s where it started off. I went to school. I went to undergraduate school at UC San Diego in beautiful La Jolla. And I chose UC San Diego because it has a pharmacy school.
So leading into my undergraduate degree, I knew that pharmacy was something that I had an interest in or medications actually. I was just interested in medications and how they interact in the body. And so I decided to go to UCSD. It was a great decision because I met a lot of amazing mentors who helped me grow my passion and apply to pharmacy school. And I stayed on at UC San Diego for an additional four years for my doctorate of pharmacy. And then I moved kind of all over the place.
Maureen: So before you go into the move and what happened there, you mentioned you had an interest in medications and how they interact in the body. Where did that come from? Especially as a young adult, like that’s such a unique thing to find an interest in.
Jenny: Yes, it is pretty unique. Honestly, there isn’t one moment where I realized I have this interest. I was sick a lot as a child, just with normal things, but my family is one of those weird ones where they turn to medication as soon as possible, like to treat symptoms and everything. And so it was very familiar to me.
And then when I went to UC San Diego as an undergrad, I volunteered at the free clinic and the free clinic is this amazing place where the medical school participates, the pharmacy school participates, we have the social workers, we have all of these different disciplines in one little building every Tuesday night in downtown San Diego and that was the first time I saw pharmacists acting outside of CVS, outside of Target, outside of Walmart. And I saw them interacting with the interdisciplinary team. And that’s kind of what intrigued me even further into pharmacy.
Maureen: Love it. Okay, so you go through school and then? You were going to start talking about a move. So take us there.
Jenny: Yes, after growing up in California, I decided I wanted to leave California for a little bit and see pharmacy practice outside of California, but also experience something else. And so I was one of the few in my entire graduating class to actually pursue a residency outside of California, just because usually people want to be coming to California for residency, but I was doing the opposite.
I fell in love with Tufts University. That’s where I did my first residency, in Boston and it was fun. It was amazing. I was a newlywed. And after that I decided, okay, it’s time to go back to California. So I did my second residency.
Maureen: Yes, very, very different weather and very different environments, communities.
Jenny: Yes, everything is different. It was still a big city, but for personal reasons and for my husband, we decided to go back to California and I did a second residency with the Veterans Affairs Health System in greater Los Angeles. And it was in that residency where I really honed in on my passion and my skill to build interdisciplinary teams.
Again, it ties back to that free clinic model. I like that model. I saw how successful it is for patients outside of the hospital. So that’s where
Maureen: Can you talk a little bit about what that means? What does it mean to build an interdisciplinary team as it relates to someone’s health?
Jenny: Yes, very good question. Building an interdisciplinary team for an individual with a chronic condition means you are getting all the different aspects that can play into that person’s health condition.
We know now that the classic biomedical model is not effective when treating complex chronic conditions, right? You can’t just look at something and throw medication at it and expect it to work. You know that there’s other things that are playing into it. Their home life, their socioeconomic status, their support, what other chronic conditions do they have? What’s going on with their mental health?
That’s where the biopsychosocial model comes into play and where you have, like for example, most recently on my chronic pain team, I had myself, I had a physical therapist, a whole health coach, a physician, and a Nurse Practitioner (NP), all of us were working together and the patient would see all of us for their condition.
Maureen: Wow, amazing. That’s great.
Jenny: Yes, it’s an ideal model. You could probably guess that it’s hard to implement in all institutions because it’s time consuming where you’re getting all these different expertise in one, for one thing, it’s hard, but it’s worth it in terms of a patient outcome and satisfaction perspective.
Maureen: I would imagine, especially with chronic pain. I have chronic back issues and I have a whole stack of the individuals that I see and I always try to mention to this one that, “I’m seeing this other one, just so you guys know about each other”. But yes, I would imagine having them talk to each other would be a real game changer. So that’s fascinating. I will dive into that a little bit more. But I digress.
You did the Veterans Residency in California. Then what happened?
Jenny: And then from there, I actually did a trip around the world. I decided to take a break and I took eight weeks to go all over the world with my husband.
And then I landed my first job and it was to implement these interdisciplinary teams in the AmCare setting for a health system in LA. They weren’t familiar with a pharmacist practicing in the capacity that I was. They wanted to bring that to their health system.
So I was doing that for about three years. And then Chris, my husband, got an offer to teach at Cornell University. He’s a professor here. And so we made the big move over just right after COVID, 2021.
Maureen: That leads to, I’m sure, directly to what came next, which is Seen.
Tell us a little bit about what Seen Nutrition is and where did that idea come from to start that business?
Jenny: Yes, actually, I should back up a little bit. I’m just talking about my professional experience, but what was happening personally really impacts where Seen came from.
During COVID, I had my daughter and, two months postpartum, I fractured my spine. And so that’s when all of this exploration regarding my health and everything came about, where I was diagnosed with pregnancy lactation osteoporosis, which is a very rare condition, but very severe.
That was going on in the background amidst COVID, amidst figuring out a cross country move, having an eight month old daughter. So all of these things were happening in the background, but I was still working. I went back to work like three months after having my daughter, even though I broke my back. So my mindset was just off.
Maureen: Your mindset was off in a sense that when you look back at that and you think, what was I thinking? Why didn’t I take more time to rest?
Jenny: I’ve been go-go-go my whole life. I have not taken any breaks. I’ve been [going from] school to school to residency to work. And so I think that was the mode that I was in.
Even after this life changing diagnosis, I decided, no, I need to go back to work. But it was in some ways a blessing in disguise because my body was forcing me to really take a break and look at what’s happening with my health, what’s happening with me professionally.
That’s where the beginnings of Seen kind of came about because I had to really stop and take a second and think about what do I want to do in terms of my professional life and how can I meld this life-changing experience into it because I think that there’s a space where I could combine the two.
Maureen: I love it. And so what year was that?
Jenny: That was in 2020.
Maureen: Okay, so post 2020, such a transformative year for many people and the years that followed. I can’t tell you how many people I continue to hear from that are making major changes in how they work, where they work, how they show up.
It’s not the traditional [career], like it was 40 years ago, right? I’m going to go get a job and I’m going to work there forever and ever. I’m going to punch the clock and then some, and I’m going to give 60 hours a week and my boss sucks and I’m going to deal with it. And just the slog of work.
I’m wildly passionate about encouraging people to pursue what they’re actually passionate about and taking that moment to think. And it doesn’t have to be that you’re leaving, that you’re making a major change in your career while that exploration is happening, right? Not everybody can take time away from work to, you know, dive into that sort of thing, but you can take time for the reflection of what do I actually want to be doing with my time?
It sounds like you, like it or not, right? Your body said, we’re going to take some time to think about, you know, encourage you to take some time to think about what is right for you.
Jenny: Yes, and I think that looks different for each person. For me, doing a crazy 180 shift just like would never happen. So incrementally, looking back, I could see I was starting to make changes.
Then I really delved into preventative medicine and got functional medicine training that shifted to focus on chronic pain because I can understand what my patients are going through because I have chronic pain. So I started to incrementally shift.
And then at some point, you know, still in the back of my mind, I’m like, well, osteoporosis, there’s so many things wrong in this field. There’s so many gaps. I feel like I could do something here.
I’ve struggled with calcium supplementation. I’m a pharmacist. I know adherence is important. All of these things were kind of looming in the back of my mind.
And I think conversations with Adrienne truly just like as a friend really brought these out and we started asking these questions of like, why isn’t there a better calcium supplement? How can we eat calcium from food in an easier way? How come the calcium supplement industry has had zero innovation despite it affecting the majority of the population?
All of these big questions were really coming to a head. And I think that’s when we started to really dive into, well, let’s do something about it then.
Maureen: I have, as of late, really been trying to pay attention to sectors that have changed drastically thanks to innovation that have now become the norm. A good example of that is movie theaters, right? That you can’t go to an old school movie theater now where the seats don’t move and you know, and the ticket was $6 or something like that, right? It’s three times as expensive, but the experience is very different.
And someone changed the game to say, we’re going to go up here now. And then everyone had no choice but to follow suit and rise up.
Another example is car washes, right? Where you used to be very different and like somebody innovated and now here we are.
So talk about why Seen is an innovation and what it’s changing in calcium. And also you mentioned Adrienne, who I know is your co-founder, but talk about her background a little bit, too.
Jenny: Yes, the calcium supplement industry has been around for centuries, Calcium carbonate is not new. It’s mined from rocks. It’s very cheap. It’s been used for osteoporosis prevention and treatment for many, many, many years. And we have a lot of research into that supplement.
The problem is that calcium supplementation when it comes to osteoporosis should be holistic.
You should be getting your calcium in context. As we like to put it, you need more than calcium for bone health. You need magnesium, phosphorus, protein, fiber, you need a good gut, all of these things. But what has been on the market was providing calcium in silo.
It’s a lot harder to provide calcium in context in a very evidence-based way. And so I think that’s the state of the market.
As of now, it’s easy to just buy cheap calcium carbonate and check that box off and be done.
But now, knowing the problems of synthetic calcium supplementation and how hard and unenjoyable it is, we’re doing the hard work to actually make something that’s enjoyable, efficacious, and delicious because we think women deserve it.
Maureen: But it’s more than just, it is an enjoyable experience. I’ve eaten it, it is delicious. I know you were in the Grow-NY competition and I spoke to a number of the judges after who also said the same and other people who tasted it at the competition.
It definitely has that delicious factor, but in the supplement category, that’s not as important. I think it’s more so, and it’s not what you’re emphasizing either, really, right? It’s about the efficacy.
When you talk about this complete solution, and these aren’t your words, but I think of it as more so in its natural state, less, less changed, you know, from its, it’s how it was naturally occurring and a cornerstone of seeing and what makes it unique is the fact that it’s real food, right? So talk about that. And why has no one done that before?
Jenny: Yes, the hallmark difference between us and everything else on the market is that we’re the only calcium too that’s made from real food ingredients.
Our calcium plus all those minerals are from milk, right? So you’re getting all the other nutrients that are needed for bone health.
It’s called a dairy food matrix. You can’t mimic that in a lab. You can’t mimic that by taking a little bit of this element, a little bit of this, and then combining in a pill. So with that foundation of you can’t mimic food, we created something that is made from food.
And so we run nutrition facts labels. We don’t have a supplement fact panel on the back. And so that’s really our main difference. And it translates into adherence because adherence is really important. We know from population health data that if you don’t like what you’re taking, even if it tastes good or bad, you’re not going to take it.
But if it’s good and it’s enjoyable, then you’ll take it more and thus it will have impacts on your health. So that’s where the taste piece comes in.
Maureen: I know I don’t want to digress because I know that there’s a big story to it, but you mentioned the fact that you have a nutrition fact panel (NFP) instead of a supplement panel.
Now, that’s a benefit and a drawback in some ways, too, right? Because when it comes to this, we work with a lot of food and beverage, CPGs, consumer packaged goods and what goes on your package in many cases determines where you can be sold in the store.
That’s a cornerstone benefit and challenge for you as an organization, right? Is that you have an NFP as opposed to a supplement panel. So talk about your decision there a little bit.
Jenny: We decided that it was a tough decision and a lot of thought went into it because of the various things that you’ve just pointed out. I think for us, our basis of Seen Nutrition is that we are a food first company. So it makes sense to run a nutrition facts panel because we’re only using food.
We also like that we’re held to a higher standard. Supplements are the wild west. There is no regulation.
So consumers are confused when they look at supplements. When they look at food, they get it. You could see the carbohydrates, the calories, the content of the minerals and everything. And so that really played into our decision.
And yes, when we’re talking to retailers or other stores, they’re like, would you be in the supplement aisle or would you be in the snack aisle? That’s a conversation I think that we’ll have forever in our business.
But I could see that the conversations regarding it are shifting a little bit because now the functional food category is really growing.
There’s other supplements out there that run nutrition facts panels and they’re probably coming across the same thing. And so some smaller natural food stores have this growing kind of island in the supplement facts aisle that houses functional foods. So there are foods that provide a clean clinically significant dose of something.
Maureen: That is a consumer trend that continues to rise. We’re seeing it, like you said, all across the grocery store in a number of different categories, but I think the supplement aisle is its own unique thing, right? Where that can stand out and be, again, a benefit and a challenge in a lot of ways. So catch us up.
Who is Adrienne? Why did you partner with her on this? Why is she, because you’re co-founders in this business, which is significant too, right? To like start this truly together. So talk about Adrienne a bit.
Jenny: Yes, so my co founder, Dr. Adrienne Bittar. She is a lecturer of food studies here at Cornell.
And we started off as friends, but have found that we have really complimentary skill sets. She brings a wealth of knowledge about diet, food, history, and I bring the knowledge of pharmacology, medication, and science
That combination has proved really successful. We’ve only been on the market for a little over a year and a half now, but we’ve made really smart decisions because of the different perspectives that we bring.
I was thinking about that this morning, because I was thinking about this conversation. And I think it really comes down to the fact that in our professional lives, we have a very high standard of doing things, right? Like when I’m seeing a patient, I’m not going to understand this medication 20%. No, I’m going to know the evidence 100 % and then make an informed decision.
When Adrienne is writing a book about the diet of American culture, she’s going to understand it 100%.
We bring that same rigor to this company. And I think it’s refreshing for people because they’re not used to that when it comes to supplements. They’re just used to flashy marketing claims and things that are questionable.
We’re very transparent in terms of what we say and what we claim.
Maureen: I think it’s that skill set, too, of doing something 100% that makes you such successful startup founders and business owners and why you’ve seen such great traction with the business, which I want to talk about here in a minute too, is the ability to see something through.
So there’s another startup that we work with that just has the audacity. Like she has gained so much traction because she is not afraid to make the phone call, do the pitch, shoot her shot. Just try to get where she wants to go and you will not get there if you don’t try.
But you have to, like you said, you said you two are a hundred percent type people and you’ll be successful because of that. So talk a little bit about your traction and what the growth of the company has looked like over the last 18 months.
Jenny: Yes, it’s been phenomenal. We have customers in all 50 states and that continues to grow. I think what is so exciting to see is that most of our growth is organic. Our customers, when they try our product and they’re finally relieved to try a calcium supplement that doesn’t upset their stomach, they immediately tell their 10 closest friends. And it shows because we could track, who referred you to calcium? And we could see that data.
And so they’re telling their friends, they’re telling their doctors, they’re telling their endocrinologists, their yoga therapists. So we really infiltrated.
I want to just share a really cool story, which shows how much we’re in this space now. So Adrienne’s mom was at this social gathering in the Bay Area, just having lunch with people that she met that day and they were talking about their health, were talking about osteoporosis, and this random lady is like, I just started this calcium chew. Yes, she was like, I just tried this calcium chew, it’s so good, and like, here, you guys have to try it. She brought out her bag and was like making all of the women try it, and Adrienne’s mom was like, that’s my daughter. Yes, there you go. So we’re getting out there.
We are, I think, one of the first to really innovate in this space and menopause is growing. And so that’s really helping because we’re in this space. We know the menopause providers, the osteoporosis specialists. So we’re right in this intersection that is really magical.
Maureen: That niche focus too, right? You have seen that product development through a hundred percent, you know? So it checks all the boxes and you know what boxes it needs to check because of the experience that you and Adrienne have.
But it is also no joke to try and start and scale a direct to consumer business, especially one on subscription. And so you are like, you’ve got 50 rocks on top of you holding you down when it comes to that being your sort of approach, right?
Because why? Because you have the discoverability factor of every single one of the customers that you acquire, you are bringing them in. It’s not like a retailer where you’re going to have some discoverability because they’re walking the floor for that sort of thing, right?
You mentioned that your growth has been primarily organic. You get tons of referrals, but I know that you also, you two as individuals, are also great thought leaders in the industry. And so you’re getting doctor referrals and stuff like that, recommendations in that front.
Talk about like the very early days. When you think about your first six months, what did it look like to start to build awareness and get people to be comfortable with a subscription service for a brand new business.
Jenny: Yes, that was really challenging. And at some points we were like, are we doing this right? You know, because we don’t have experience doing this. Like I’ve never run a meta ad before, but we were having to navigate it.
I think what we really relied on during that time, again, was just our expertise and just being transparent about the education piece. Because we needed to educate people that this is the difference between synthetic calcium supplements and our calcium supplement. And this is how it’s different and this is how ours may be better for you.
We’re not going to make these claims that if you take our calcium supplement, your bone density, it will increase. But we’re saying it may be better for you because you’ll tolerate it better, you’ll enjoy it and so on.
But also what was really, really critical in those early stages was forming those relationships with key providers who amplified our message. So in particular, there’s this one doctor of physical therapy who specializes in osteoporosis and she has a big following on social media. She found out about our product. She’s very strict on what she endorses. She’s never endorsed anything when it comes to supplements, but we had a conversation with her and she’s like, I believe in you guys. I trust this product. She recommended it to her audience.
Maureen: My God, I love stories like that because again, it just shows alignment, right? And why niche expertise is such a critical cornerstone of a company’s ability to build trust and therefore grow.
And it’s so rare, especially, I mean, really, I was going to say early on, but really at any stage of a business to be able to point to a thing that you are sure that that thing moved the needle but you’ve given multiple examples throughout this discussion of times where you can say, well, I know we did this thing and it resulted in that, which is tough to pair things up like that, especially as you continue to grow and get larger and sales are coming in all the time from many different directions. It’ll be more difficult to kind of pinpoint that it came from that place, but the more you can have that clear understanding, it just helps to know where to pull the levers.
Jenny: Totally. When we saw that, I listened to how I built this and it was one of those classic stories that you hear. It was like that. We were getting pings every minute and we’re like, my God, what’s going on? What’s going on?
And so we checked social media and we saw that she posted about us and it was like, okay, this works. We need to connect with 10 other providers like this who already have trust with their community and then can share it.
And yes, that’s really the core of our marketing.
Maureen: How did that start? Did she reach out to you because she discovered it or you reached out to her because you knew that her expertise and her following was exactly who needed your product?
Jenny: Yes, the second one, we reached out to her. We just cold emailed. Going back to your point about the audacity, yes, we have no shame. We will go after every [opportunity].
Why not just email and ask and we have the credentials to back it up. And I think another piece to that is that we have the audacity, but we also don’t take no for an answer in the best way possible in the most respectful way, because we know that if we took no as an answer, we wouldn’t be where we are right now. If we took the no, this person doesn’t want to produce for us or this person doesn’t want to give us that ingredient, then we would, we would just, we wouldn’t even have a product to sell.
Maureen: You have to have that resilience, right? And so that is closely connected to having the audacity. You said no shame, but it’s not a shame thing. It’s an, I believe in myself so much that I know that this is the right thing for these people.
And if it’s not right for them, then that’s okay. And I’ll go on to the next one. I’ll find, I’ll find the, I’ll continue chasing the nose until it’s a yes.
Jenny: Exactly. There’s always a workaround or a work through or a different option. And I think that’s proven to be really helpful for both Adrienne and I, because we’re both like that. So if we come across a hurdle, we just figure a way around it.
Maureen: So we’ve talked about a lot of the success that you’ve had, the traction that you’ve gained. Let’s talk about the other side of the coin. What are some of the challenges that you have faced?
Jenny: The challenges I think really have to do with the fact of the nature of a startup. It’s so different from the work that Adrienne and I were doing before.
Like the work that I was doing, I was, I knew what to expect each day. I would see my patients, we would have meetings, all those things.
But with the startup, I’m having to learn like three different new programs in a given day. I’m having to research legal things and finance that I’ve never been exposed to before.
So that’s challenging. It’s nothing that we can’t overcome, but there’s just like friction to it.
And then I think also for us, like we take the responsibility of providing calcium to these women really seriously. So we feel a lot of weight in making sure that we have enough product for all of our customers. And that’s never going to be compromised because we are a subscription business so we have to make sure we constantly have enough.
So those are the two most things that have been I guess barriers or things of concern for us.
Maureen: I wouldn’t of those as challenges, as areas concerning opportunities for growth, however you want to position it. But, you know, new learnings even you could say.
Again, it’s that mindset of teaching resilience and having resilience that allows you to get through that.
So you mentioned you have a young daughter, I have a nine and eleven year old and I really try to think about that when they come to me with a problem. I can’t remember if it was my son or daughter. One of them came to me the other day and they were saying that, oh, it was my daughter. She had a blister on her finger because she had been writing so much and she wanted me to reach out to her teacher and tell her teacher that she shouldn’t have to write anymore because her finger hurts. And so I said, did you talk to your teacher about that? Did you have a conversation with your teacher about that? And she said, well, no.
I said, I feel like that might be a good place for you to start before I reach out to your teacher, right? And I had a similar thing with my son when he was around the same age too, perhaps even a little bit younger, but when you can teach them to solve their own problems, you’re teaching resilience, you’re teaching them the ability to think through and problem solve.
And that is such a valuable skill, which you’re demonstrating here in what you just explained with those challenges, you’re not letting them hold you back. You’re not letting them, the fear of no, hold you back from what you’re looking to accomplish.
And that resiliency is something that can be taught, it can be nurtured, but it’s a core skill that is required for the success of any business. Any human, really, I would say human, especially we’re talking about pain and health and your resilience and your ability to think full picture and not get dragged down by the blister on your finger, right? They are all parts of the story.
Jenny: For sure. As you’re speaking, I’m trying to think like, where did I learn my resilience from? I don’t know, the short answer is no, I don’t know. I’ll have to think about that.
I think a lot of it is like passive observation, like seeing my mom, my grandparents, like what did they go through? Did I see them give up? Did I see them say, well, I’m going to just do something else. No. So that probably really affected how I built my resilience. And hopefully I’m affecting how my daughter, my five year old daughter will build resilience too.
Maureen: Tell us a little bit about, last question for you and then I’ll let you go. This was a great conversation. Talk a little bit about what’s next.
I’d be curious to hear sort of the immediate horizon in terms of, I’m sure you’ve got like shows and improvements that you’re making, but also a little bit more further afield. What does Seen look like and ideally the calcium industry or osteoporosis industry look like in five or 10 years?
Jenny: Yes, in the near future, we have a lot of exciting things on the horizon. We have new products that are expected to come out, hopefully sometime in 2026 in the spring and then the summer.
We have a clinical study underway with Cornell. It’s going to be a randomized prospective clinical control trial. I think once we get those results, it’ll really help us understand these adherence rates and this tolerability issue. It’s comparing our calcium too with calcium carbonate.
We have plans to expand possibly to international countries. So in Canada, we have a growing wait list of customers abroad. so that would be great for us to expand internationally. So that’s in the immediate [future].
We’re also growing our team, right? Thanks to Grow-NY, we’re growing our team. We’re growing our base, which is helpful as we scale.
Then just big picture-wise, down the line, five years, 10 years down the line, we’d really like to see a shift in the supplement industry by focusing on evidence-based nutrition.
I think what has happened because of the lack of regulatory oversight in the supplement field is that celebrities and business people end up making supplements and that’s not who should be making supplements.
When we have a problem, we go to our providers for medical advice and that should be the same with supplements. So I would love to see some shifts there where, yes, people like more pharmacists are getting into the supplement industry, really creating products that work and that have evidence behind it.
I’d love Seen to be the first one to really do that and initiate that change and disrupt what’s been happening for so long. I want Seen to be the bone health company for women, for men, for the first one in their mind to turn to when it comes to bone health nutrition. And if they have an osteoporosis diagnosis, osteopenia, whatever, they turn to Seen first.
Maureen: I think that’s an excellent goal. I think that that observation of evidence-based nutrition for the future, especially in supplements, I think you’re absolutely right. I can see all of the ducks lining up for why that would make sense in five to 10 years.
And I want to also go back to when you were talking about the near term. First of all, please be sure to let us know once those new products launch so that we can connect them to this podcast and ideally add to the show notes what that is once you’re ready, but also I think it’s unique for you to have seen such success in the growth of the company before you had the data, like the clinical trial data to back it up, right? Because there is a discussion of trust building and efficacy and how do we know that that actually works like you say that it works?
I would just caution anybody who’s listening to this, who may be starting their own thing, where they’re making claims that it is critically important to be cautious with your language. And you noted it before too, where you were saying, we’re not promising this or that, you know, and so, but this study, this clinical control trial that you’re doing really will allow you to make some additional claims, right? And so that’s huge.
Jenny: Yes, for sure. It’s huge. And I think we had such success up till now without that study because we’re drawing on the fact that we’re just made from food. We have centuries worth of data regarding dairy calcium, and that’s essentially what’s in our chew. So people knew that, and there’s a lot of evidence to that already.
But you’re right, like if another supplement is on the market that’s combining a little bit of like ashwagandha and like lion’s mane and all these things like that would be a harder sell because the research is not strong as it is right now.
Maureen: I see. So you’re saying that you were able to fall back on or leverage the research that we have as the strong dairy industry that allowed you to pull some of those claims forward.
Jenny: Yes, that’s the only reason why we created what we did because we already had evidence to support it. I wouldn’t be, you know, selling something that doesn’t have evidence. So we relied on that strong dairy research to create the product. And now we’re looking specifically at our product and we want data on it specifically.
Maureen: So smart. And then the last thing I’ll say about what you said in terms of near term is certainly at the very least with expansion into Canada, and you mentioned you’ve got a wait list there, there are federal trade programs that you can get grants to help support an expansion into Canada specifically.
Jenny: Yes, I know those grants and programs are amazing. We’re already looped in with several of them. They’ve been really, really helpful. It’s just I think going to international expansion requires a whole ‘nother person, because it’s such a big job in terms of regulation, distribution, customer service. But yes, they have supported us significantly.
Maureen: That’s fantastic. Thank you for telling your story and for educating me and our listeners a little bit more about scenes, success and traction. And I can’t wait to see what’s next. Thanks so much for taking the time to join me today.
Jenny: Thank you so much for having me. This was really fun.